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vgr_fam1.txt
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OFFICE OF PUBLIC INFORMATION
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICs AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA. TELEPHONE (213) 354-5Oll
P36089 C
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).