On the eve of St. Valentine’s Day 1990, a remarkable and unprecedented token of affection unfolded almost 3.7 billion miles (six billion kilometres) away – about 40.11 Astronomical Units (AU) – and some 32 degrees above the plane of the ecliptic. For nearly a decade, the cameras aboard Voyager 1 had remained unused, but that lengthy period of hibernation and quietness was about to end. Operating through its wide-angle and narrow-angle lenses, the spacecraft acquired 64 photographs over four hours on the evening of 13 February to capture a unique ‘portrait’ of six of our Solar System’s planets. Never before had most of the Sun’s family been seen from such an extreme distance. The Sun appeared as a brighter-than-average star. Mercury, regrettably, was lost in its glare; Mars, a mere crescent at the time, could not be positively identified; and Pluto (still classified as a ‘planet’ in 1990) was too tiny to be adequately resolved. The resultant, stitched-together ‘mosaic’ was backdropped by the southern constellation Eridanus, the river, which extended curtain-like behind the planets from Voyager 1’s perspective. Its twin, Voyager 2, which was then heading southwards ‘below’ the ecliptic plane at an angle of 48 degrees, could not acquire a similar mosaic of images, partly because its view of Jupiter was subjected to disturbances from the Sun’s glare.


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    Titel :

    A Message from Humanity


    Weitere Titelangaben:

    Springer Praxis Books(formerly: Springer-Praxis Series)


    Beteiligte:
    Evans, Ben (Autor:in)


    Erscheinungsdatum :

    2022-08-24


    Format / Umfang :

    16 pages





    Medientyp :

    Aufsatz/Kapitel (Buch)


    Format :

    Elektronische Ressource


    Sprache :

    Englisch




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