voyager 1 foto 1990

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This Day In History : February 14

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“Pale Blue Dot” photo of Earth is taken

On Valentine's Day, 1990, 3.7 billion miles away from the sun, the Voyager 1 spacecraft takes a photograph of Earth. The picture, known as Pale Blue Dot , depicts our planet as a nearly indiscernible speck roughly the size of a pixel.

Launched on September 5, 1977, Voyagers 1 and 2 were charged with exploring the outer reaches of our solar system. It passed by Jupiter in March of 1979 and Saturn the following year. The gaps between the outer planets are so vast that it was another decade before it passed by Neptune and arrived at the spot where it was to take a series of images of the planets, known as the "Family Portrait" of our solar system.

Of the Family Portrait series, Pale Blue Dot was certainly the most memorable. The furthest image ever taken of Earth, it lent its name to popular astronomer Carl Sagan's 1994 book. Sagan, who advised the Voyager mission and had suggested the photo, wrote the following: "Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."

Voyager 1's journey continues. In 1998, it became the most distant human-made object in space, and on August 25, 2012, it left the furthest reaches of the sun's magnetic field and solar winds, becoming the first man-made object in interstellar space. 

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St. Valentine beheaded

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’pale blue dot’ revisited, jet propulsion laboratory.

For the 30th anniversary of one of the most iconic views from the Voyager mission, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, is publishing a new version of the image known as the “Pale Blue Dot.”

The updated image uses modern image-processing software and techniques while respecting the intent of those who planned the image. Like the original, the new color view shows Planet Earth as a single, bright blue pixel in the vastness of space. Rays of sunlight scattered within the camera optics stretch across the scene, one of which happens to have intersected dramatically with Earth.

The view was obtained on Feb. 14, 1990, just minutes before Voyager 1’s cameras were intentionally powered off to conserve power and because the probe — along with its sibling, Voyager 2 — would not make close flybys of any other objects during their lifetimes. Shutting down instruments and other systems on the two Voyager spacecraft has been a gradual and ongoing process that has helped enable their longevity .

This celebrated Voyager 1 view was part of a series of 60 images designed to produce what the mission called the “Family Portrait of the Solar System.” This sequence of camera-pointing commands returned images of six of the solar system’s planets, as well as the Sun. The Pale Blue Dot view was created using the color images Voyager took of Earth.

The popular name of this view is traced to the title of the 1994 book by Voyager imaging scientist Carl Sagan, who originated the idea of using Voyager’s cameras to image the distant Earth and played a critical role in enabling the family portrait images to be taken.

Additional information about the Pale Blue Dot image is available at:

https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/536/voyager-1s-pale-blue-dot/

The original Pale Blue Dot and Family Portrait images are available at:

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA00452

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA00451

The Voyager spacecraft were built by JPL, which continues to operate both. JPL is a division of Caltech in Pasadena. The Voyager missions are a part of the NASA Heliophysics System Observatory, sponsored by the Heliophysics Division of the Science Mission Directorate in Washington. For more information about the Voyager spacecraft, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/voyager

https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov

Calla Cofield​ Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 626-808-2469 [email protected]

Written by Preston Dyches

Happy Birthday, 'Pale Blue Dot!' Famous Space Photo Turns 25

One of history's most iconic photos turns 25 years old Saturday (Feb. 14).

On Feb. 14, 1990, NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft took a family portrait of the solar system, capturing Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter, Venus and Earth — which showed up as a "pale blue dot" — in a single view.

The famous image "continues to inspire wonderment about the spot we call home," Voyager project scientist Ed Stone, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, said in a NASA statement. [ 5 Facts About NASA's Far-Flung Voyager Spacecraft ]

The late astronomer Carl Sagan referenced and further immortalized the photo in the title of his 1994 book, "The Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space" (Random House). Sagan was part of the Voyager imaging team when the picture was taken.

Voyager 1 took the photo while located 40 astronomical units (AU) from Earth, NASA officials said. (One AU is the distance from Earth to the sun — about 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers.)

Only three of the solar system's then-recognized nine planets failed to find a spot in the picture: Mars was too dark; Mercury was too close to the sun, and Pluto was too dim. (The International Astronomical Union demoted Pluto to "dwarf planet" status in 2006, in a decision that remains controversial today.)

Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, launched a few weeks apart in 1977 to conduct an unprecedented "grand tour" of the outer solar system. Together, the two probes gave researchers some of their first good looks at Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, as well as the moons of those big, gaseous planets.

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Both spacecraft then kept right on flying. In August 2012, Voyager 1 became the first man-made object to reach interstellar space ; Voyager 2, which took a different route through the solar system, should achieve the milestone soon as well.

The series of images that comprise the "pale blue dot" portrait were the last that Voyager 1 took. The probe's handlers turned Voyager 1's camera off to retask the computer controlling the camera for other purposes.

"After taking these images in 1990, we began our interstellar mission. We had no idea how long the spacecraft would last," Stone said in the statement .

Voyager 1 is now about 130 AU from Earth. If the probe tried to photograph Earth right now, the planet would appear about 10 times dimmer than in did back in February 1990, NASA officials said.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter  @michaeldwall  and  Google+ . Follow us @Spacedotcom , Facebook  or Google+ . Originally published on  Space.com .

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

Michael Wall is a Senior Space Writer with  Space.com  and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers exoplanets, spaceflight and military space, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat. His book about the search for alien life, "Out There," was published on Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.

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Data acquired June 6, 1990 442 x 600 14 KB - JPEG

Data acquired June 6, 1990 453 x 614 682 KB - TIFF

Solar System Portrait - Earth as ‘Pale Blue Dot’

This narrow-angle color image of the Earth, dubbed 'Pale Blue Dot', is a part of the first ever 'portrait' of the solar system taken by Voyager 1. The spacecraft acquired a total of 60 frames for a mosaic of the solar system from a distance of more than 4 billion miles from Earth and about 32 degrees above the ecliptic. From Voyager's great distance Earth is a mere point of light, less than the size of a picture element even in the narrow-angle camera. Earth was a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size. Coincidentally, Earth lies right in the center of one of the scattered light rays resulting from taking the image so close to the sun. This blown-up image of the Earth was taken through three color filters -- violet, blue and green -- and recombined to produce the color image. The background features in the image are artifacts resulting from the magnification.

Published June 6, 1990 Data acquired June 6, 1990

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Emily Lakdawalla & Charlene Anderson • Feb 12, 2010

Twenty years since Voyager's last view

On Sunday comes the twentieth anniversary of an iconic image from the Voyager mission: the "Pale Blue Dot" photo of Earth caught in a sunbeam, which was captured by Voyager 1 as part of a Solar System Family Portrait. This panoramic view of our planetary cradle wouldn't have happened without years of advocacy by Planetary Society founder Carl Sagan, whose vision still inspires our organization.

Nothing like it has been done since. There hasn't been the opportunity -- Voyager 1 is the last spacecraft to have departed the solar system with a functional camera. The next one to be in a similar position will be New Horizons . I asked Alan Stern whether the Pluto-bound craft will take a family portrait from its distant perspective. He told me "Absolutely! But because of the bright Sun, we have to be careful for now, so we can't do it until after Pluto. We can however (and soon will-- this summer!) look back to Jupiter and see it and the Galilean satellites from 2+ billion km away near the orbit of Uranus. It should be quite evocative." Indeed it will.

There are several retrospectives on Voyager's solar system family portrait being posted across the Internet today, including this one from JPL and this really neat story from National Public Radio , featuring an interview of Candy Hansen, who was apparently the first person to spot Earth fixed in that sunbeam. Here's one written by the Society's Charlene Anderson a few years ago, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Voyagers' launches.

by Charlene Anderson

This article is reprinted from the September/October 2002 issue of The Planetary Report.

Home. Family. This will be Voyager's enduring legacy: It has changed forever the feelings raised by those words. Through its robotic eyes we have learned to see the solar system as our home. Through its portraits of the planets we know that they are part of our family.

Apollo astronauts showed us a tiny Earth alone in the blackness of space. Now, with these images, Voyager has shown us that Earth is not really alone. Around our parent Sun orbit sibling worlds, companions as we travel through the Galaxy.

These family portraits of the Sun and planets were Voyager's final photographic assignment. Planetary Society President and Voyager Imaging Team member Carl Sagan worked for a decade to get these pictures taken. Between the two Voyager spacecraft, they returned some 67,000 images of the four outer planets and their 56 known moons. Voyager 1 had the slightly easier assignment: It encountered Jupiter in March 1979 and swung by Saturn in November 1980. Then it headed out in search of the heliopause, the edge of our Sun's sphere of magnetic influence, and where the solar wind gives way to the wind from the stars. In August 1989 Voyager 2 flew by Neptune, completing its reconnaissance mission, having visited Jupiter in 1979, Saturn in 1981 and Uranus in 1986. After passing Neptune, Voyager 2 joined its twin on the way to interstellar space.

The Voyagers had been launched in 1977 to take advantage of a planetary alignment that occurs only once every 176 years. The outer planets were lined up so that a spacecraft could swing from one to another, threading its way past the 4 gas giants in only 12 years. Mission planners at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory could select their paths from among many possible trajectories and targets.

For Voyager 1, they chose to send the spacecraft close by Titan's south pole to obtain close-up data on Saturn's largest moon. Titan's thick nitrogen atmosphere proved to be heavy with complex, carbon-rich organic molecules, and its surface is possibly dotted with lakes of liquid hydrocarbons. For carbon-based lifeforms living in a primarily nitrogen atmosphere - such as ourselves - a world like Titan is well worth a close look.

But to fly close to Titan, the project team had to sacrifice Voyager 1's encounters with Uranus and Neptune or a close-up look at Pluto. Its path around Saturn swung the spacecraft up and out of the ecliptic, the plane defined by Earth's orbit about the Sun. Looking from its Pasadena home on Earth's northern hemisphere, the spacecraft now appears to be coasting above our solar system.

Voyager 1 was chosen to take the family portrait because fewer instruments might be damaged by looking back toward the Sun. And, to Voyager 2, now beyond Neptune and traveling much closer to the ecliptic, Jupiter was too close to the Sun to be picked up by the spacecraft's cameras.

So on February 14 - Valentine's Day 1990 - Voyager 1 aimed its cameras at a string of small colored dots clustered just to the right of the constellation Orion - the Hunter. The spacecraft was then 32 degrees above the ecliptic and nearly 6 billion kilometers (3.7 billion miles) from the Sun. It took 39 wide-angle views and 21 narrow-angle images. The narrow-angle camera, with a lens resembling a telephoto, took three consecutive images through colored filters of seven of the nine planets. This enabled image processors at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to construct the colored portraits of the planets seen on pages 16 and 17. The Multi-Mission Image Processing Laboratory then pasted together the wide-angle images into the mosaic on the next page.

Voyager had produced the first portrait ever of our Sun and planets together.

But like shy family members at a holiday gathering, the smallest planets avoided having their pictures taken. Mars and Mercury were lost in the glare of the Sun. The outermost planet, Pluto, was too tiny and far away. So this family portrait is incomplete. The next generation of spacecraft will be unable to take another family portrait. Magellan and Galileo, and the planned missions, such as the Soviets' Mars '94 and NASA's Mars Observer and Comet Rendezvous/Asteroid Flyby, plus the joint NASA/European Space Agency Cassini mission, will be locked in orbit about their target planets. None of these will ever gain a perspective from which they could see the solar system as Voyager did.

Voyager alone could look homeward and capture our family of planets as they looked on February 15, 1990. Voyager alone could so graphically show us how Earth and the planets are inextricably linked to our parent Sun.

Home is now a corner of space brightened by a small yellow star. Family is now a company of planets circling that star together. Our home and family now encompass an entire solar system.

Thank you, Voyager.

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Voyager Celebrates 20-Year-Old Valentine to Solar System

On Feb. 14, 1990, NASA's Voyager 1 had sailed beyond the farthest planet in our solar system and snapped an image that was a parting valentine to our string of planets.

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NASA remasters Voyager 1's famous 'Pale Blue Dot' image

We're small, but glorious.

NASA took a fresh look at Voyager 1's 1990 "Pale Blue Dot" image showing Earth as a tiny speck in space.

Earth occupies a tiny speck of space in a wide, wild universe. NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft gifted us with a mind-altering perspective on our planet back on Feb. 14, 1990, when it snapped a distant picture of home .

The haunting view shows Earth as a tiny spot with sun rays dashing across the frame. The spacecraft, which launched in 1977, was 3.7 billion miles (6 billion kilometers) from the sun at the time.

In honor of the 30th anniversary of the image, NASA revisited the picture that became known as the "Pale Blue Dot." "The updated image uses modern image-processing software and techniques while respecting the intent of those who planned the image," said NASA on Wednesday .

Voyagers continue

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NASA turned off Voyager 1's camera system to save power shortly after snapping a series of images called the "Family Portrait of the Solar System." All these years later, Voyager is still exploring the universe. It crossed over into interstellar space in 2012 .

The "Pale Blue Dot" moniker came from astronomer Carl Sagan and his 1994 book of the same name. "That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives," Sagan wrote.

That's worth a few moments of reflection all these years later.

Dying Space Missions Remembered in Inspirational Final Images

‘Pale Blue Dot’ Images Turn 25

Valentine's Day is special for NASA's Voyager mission. It was on Feb. 14, 1990, that the Voyager 1 spacecraft looked back at our solar system and snapped the first-ever pictures of the planets from its perch at that time beyond Neptune.

This "family portrait" captures Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter, Earth and Venus from Voyager 1's unique vantage point. A few key members did not make it in: Mars had little sunlight, Mercury was too close to the sun, and dwarf planet Pluto turned out too dim.

Taking these images was not part of the original plan, but the late Carl Sagan, a member of the Voyager imaging team at the time, had the idea of pointing the spacecraft back toward its home for a last look. The title of his 1994 book, "Pale Blue Dot," refers to the image of Earth in this series.

"Twenty-five years ago, Voyager 1 looked back toward Earth and saw a 'pale blue dot,' " an image that continues to inspire wonderment about the spot we call home," said Ed Stone, project scientist for the Voyager mission, based at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.

Twenty-five years ago, Voyager 1 looked back toward Earth and saw a 'pale blue dot,' an image that continues to inspire wonderment about the spot we call home.

Dr. Edward Stone

Voyager Project Scientist

The image of Earth contains scattered light that resembles a beam of sunlight, which is an artifact of the camera itself that makes the tiny Earth appear even more dramatic. Voyager 1 was 40 astronomical units from the sun at this moment. One astronomical unit is 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers.

These family portrait images are the last that Voyager 1, which launched in 1977, returned to Earth. Mission specialists subsequently turned the camera off so that the computer controlling it could be repurposed. The spacecraft is still operating, but no longer has the capability to take images.

"After taking these images in 1990, we began our interstellar mission. We had no idea how long the spacecraft would last," Stone said.

Today, Voyager 1, at a distance of 130 astronomical units, is the farthest human-made object from Earth, and it still regularly communicates with our planet. In August 2012, the spacecraft entered interstellar space – the space between the stars -- and has been delivering data about this uncharted territory ever since. Its twin, Voyager 2, also launched in 1977, is also journeying toward interstellar space.

Voyager 1 is more than three times farther from Earth than it was on Valentine's Day 25 years ago. Today, Earth would appear about 10 times dimmer from Voyager's vantage point.

Sagan wrote in his "Pale Blue Dot" book: "That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. … There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world."

A video clip of Ann Druyan, Carl Sagan's co-author and widow, discussing the pale blue dot image, is available at:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/video/details.php?id=1363

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, built and operates the twin Voyager spacecraft. The Voyagers Interstellar Mission is a part of NASA's Heliophysics System Observatory, sponsored by the Heliophysics Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

Written by: Elizabeth Landau

NEWS RELEASE: 2015-060