7/6/2023 0 Comments Carl sagan earth picture![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() From Voyager's vantage point at the time, Earth was only separated from the Sun by a few degrees. Purely by coincidence, in the center of one sits Earth. Rays of sunlight (coming from the bottom left) are scattered within the camera's optics across the image, a result of taking the image so close to the Sun. In the original Pale Blue Dot, Earth is a mere 0.12 pixels wide (Jupiter and Saturn are both big enough to fill a pixel in their portraits), and seen as just a crescent of light. Voyager 1 points back towards the Sun taking images that would become the first-ever "family portrait" of our Solar System. When the spacecraft passed the planet in 1980, Sagan proposed the idea of the space probe taking one last picture of Earth. So on Valentine’s Day 1990, beyond Neptune and about 6 billion kilometers (3.7 billion miles) from the Sun, Voyager 1 snapped 60 images, including portraits of Venus, Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and the Sun, resulting in a composite image NASA dubbed the " Family Portrait of the Solar System." Thirty-four minutes later, its cameras would turn off forever. We Just Took A Step Closer To Building The First Nuclear Clocks ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |