Summary
Six far-distant snapshots of the planets from interstellar space
Original caption
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Voyager
These six narrow-angle color images were made from the first ever
"portrait" of the solar system taken by Voyager 1, which was more than
4 billion miles from Earth and about 32 degrees above the ecliptic.
the spacecraft acquired a total of 60 frames for a mosaic of the solar
system which shows six of the planets. Mercury is too close to the
sun to be seen. Mars was not detectable by the Voyager cameras due to
scattered sunlight in the optics, and Pluto was not included in the
mosaic because of its small size and distance from the sun. These
blown-up images, left to right and top to bottom are Venus, Earth,
Jupiter, and Saturn, Uranus, Neptune. The background features in the
images are artifacts resulting from the magnification. The images
were taken through three color filters -- violet, blue and green --
and recombined to produce the color images. Jupiter and Saturn were
resolved by the camera but Uranus and Neptune appear larger than they
really are because of image times. Earth appears to be in a band of
light because it, coincidentally lies right in the center of the
scattered light rays resulting from taking the image so close to the
sun. Earth was a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size. Venus was 0.11
pixel in diameter. The planetary images were taken with the
narrow-angle camera (1500 mm focal length).
Copyright status
This image is credited to NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Per JPL/NASA policy and applicable United States federal law, such images are in the public domain, or, if they are owned by individuals or institutions other than NASA or JPL, may be used for any journalistic, educational, or personal purpose (but not a commercial purpose) without further authorization. NASA and JPL images, other than their respective institutional logos, or photographs of actual persons, are not subject to copyright and may be used without additional permission, unless otherwise declared. For details, see the JPL Image Use Policy Declaration.
Source
NASA/JPL, <http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/image/planetary/solar_system/family_portraits.jpg>
