On another Valentines Day (February 14, 1990), cruising four billion miles from the Sun, the Voyager 1 spacecraft looked back to make this first ever family portrait of our Solar System. The complete portrait is a 60 frame mosaic made from a vantage point 32 degrees above the ecliptic plane. Voyagers wide angle camera frames sweep through the inner Solar System (far left) linking up with gas giant Neptune, at the time the Solar Systems outermost planet (scroll right). Positions for Venus, Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are indicated by the corresponding letters while the Sun is the bright spot near the center of the circle of frames. The inset frames for each of the planets are from Voyagers narrow field camera. Unseen in the portrait are Mercury, too close to the Sun to be detected, and Mars, unfortunately hidden by sunlight scattered in the cameras optical system. Small, faint Plutos position was not covered.
Posted on: Mon, 08 Dec 2014 02:28:49 +0000
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