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The "family portrait" taken by Voyager 1

The Family Portrait, or Portrait of the Planets is an image of the Solar System created by Voyager 1 on February 14, 1990; the last taken by the spacecraft before it began its mission into interstellar space. It is the source of the famous "Pale Blue Dot" image of the Earth. Astronomer Carl Sagan, who was part of the Voyager imaging team, campaigned for many years to have the pictures taken. Image File history File links Wiki_letter_w. ... Major features of the Solar System (not to scale, from left to right): Pluto, Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter, the asteroid belt, the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth & Moon, and Mars. ... Trajectory The Voyager 1 spacecraft is an 815-kilogram unmanned probe of the outer solar system and beyond, launched September 5, 1977, and is currently operational, making it NASAs longest-lasting mission. ... February 14 is the 45th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... MCMXC redirects here; for the Enigma album, see MCMXC a. ... The Space Shuttle Discovery as seen from the International Space Station. ... Interstellar Space was one of the last albums recorded before the death of John Coltrane in 1967. ... Earth is a tiny dot 4 billion miles distant, about halfway down in the rightmost streak of sunlight circled in blue Pale Blue Dot is the name of a famous Voyager 1 photograph of Earth, and the title of a book by Carl Sagan inspired by the photo. ... Adjectives: Terrestrial, Terran, Telluric, Tellurian, Earthly Atmosphere Surface pressure: 101. ... Insert non-formatted text here Carl Edward Sagan (November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer and astrobiologist and a highly successful popularizer of astronomy, astrophysics, and other natural sciences. ...

The image was shot from a distance of six billion kilometres (4 billion miles) and an angle of 32 degrees above the ecliptic plane. It comprises a mosaic of sixty seperate photopgraphs, spanning a length of several metres. Voyager 1 was chosen because flightpath had taken it out towards the Solar System's north pole, and thus, unlike its sister, Voyager 2, was in a position to view Jupiter free from the Sun's glare. The plane of the ecliptic is well seen in this picture from the 1994 lunar prospecting Clementine spacecraft. ... Trajectory Voyager 2 is an unmanned interplanetary spacecraft. ... Adjectives: Jovian Atmosphere Surface pressure: 20–200 kPa[4] (cloud layer) Composition: ~86% H2 ~13% Helium 0. ... The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. ...

Seven celestial bodies are visible in the image. They are, from right to left: Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, the Sun, Venus, Earth and Jupiter. Mars and Mercury were too small to resolve at this scale. Adjectives: Neptunian Atmosphere Surface pressure: ≫100 kPa Composition: 80% ±3. ... Adjectives: Uranian Atmosphere Surface pressure: 120 kPa (at the cloud level) Composition: 83% Hydrogen 15% Helium 1. ... Note: This article contains special characters. ... The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. ... Adjectives: Venusian or (rarely) Cytherean Atmosphere Surface pressure: 9. ... Adjectives: Terrestrial, Terran, Telluric, Tellurian, Earthly Atmosphere Surface pressure: 101. ... Adjectives: Jovian Atmosphere Surface pressure: 20–200 kPa[4] (cloud layer) Composition: ~86% H2 ~13% Helium 0. ... Note: This article contains special characters. ... Look up Mercury in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

It is not a natural image; many of the photographs were taken at varying exposures and through various filters to bring out as much detail as possible. The Sun was taken with the darkest filter and the shortest exposure to avoid damage to the craft's vidicon tube. The majority of the images are wide-angle, but the closeups of the planets themselves (seen alongside) are narrow angle images. In older video cameras, prior to the 1990s, a video camera tube or pickup tube was used instead of a charge-coupled device (CCD). ...

NASA: Visible Earth

Planetary Society: Voyager's Last View