This image consists of 60 frames taken by the Voyager 1, through wide-angle and narrow-angle cameras using the methane, violet, blue, green and clear filters. Image courtesy of NASA 1990: The first picture of our solar system looking back from deep space is sent to Earth by Voyager 1.
The image captures the sun and six planets, including Earth, in a single frame. The sun appears much as another star would from Earth, and the planets are barely visible as dots on the frame.
It was Voyager's final look backward before passing beyond the planets and heading for the edge of our solar system.
Voyager 1, launched Sept. 5, 1977, is an interplanetary probe designed to collect and transmit various data until the craft is no longer capable of functioning. Even though it was launched two weeks after its sister probe, Voyager 2, Voyager 1 was placed on a faster trajectory and long ago overtook its stablemate.
The launch of both probes was timed to coincide with a so-called grand tour of the solar system's four largest planets -- Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune -- which, owing to their alignment, meant a 12-year tour rather than the usual 30. Both Voyagers sent back spectacular images of these enormous gaseous spheres and their key moons.
After leaving the planets behind, Voyager 1's mission shifted to transmitting data from the outer solar system, which included conducting plasma-wave experiments in an effort to locate the heliopause, which the probe is expected to reach sometime around 2015.
Voyager recently passed into the heliosheath, a vast tract of space where interstellar gas begins to affect the solar winds, which weaken as the sun's influence wanes.
Nuclear batteries on board are expected to keep Voyager 1 functioning and transmitting data until 2020, when the craft will be 43 years old. Already the most distant man-made object in the universe, Voyager 1 will be more than 13 billion miles from Earth in 2020, putting it on the threshold of interstellar space.
(Source: NASA)
Planetary Imagery: 30 Years From Voyager Spacecraft
