太阳系的家族照

2024年7月13日

Solar System Family Portrait
Image Credit: Voyager Project, NASA

Explanation: In 1990, cruising four billion miles from the Sun, the Voyager 1 spacecraft looked back to make this first ever Solar System family portrait. The complete portrait is a 60 frame mosaic made from a vantage point 32 degrees above the ecliptic plane. In it, Voyager’s wide-angle camera frames sweep through the inner Solar System at the left, linking up with ice giant Neptune, the Solar System’s outermost planet, at the far right. Positions for Venus, Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are indicated by letters, while the Sun is the bright spot near the center of the circle of frames. The inset frames for each of the planets are from Voyager’s narrow-field camera. Unseen in the portrait are Mercury, too close to the Sun to be detected, and Mars, unfortunately hidden by sunlight scattered in the camera’s optical system. Closer to the Sun than Neptune at the time, small, faint Pluto’s position was not covered. In 2024 Voyager 1, NASA’s longest-running and most-distant spacecraft, is some 15 billion miles away, operating in interstellar space.

Tomorrow’s picture: galaxy vs grain of sand

太阳系的家族照
影像提供: Voyager Project, NASA

说明: 1990年，旅行者1号航天器航行到离太阳64亿公里的地方，然后转头拍下了有史以来的第一幅太阳系家族照。当时旅行者1号航天器，从黄道面上方32度之处俯视拍下60张照片，从而拼接成这张家族照。旅行者号的广角相机由左到右扫过太阳系内围，直到当时是太阳系最外围行星的海王星方止。照片中，太阳是环形区域中心的亮点，而金星，地球，木星，土星，天王星以及海王星，分别以英文字母V、E、J、S、U、N加以标示。每颗行星的小嵌图，则是由旅行者号的窄视野相机所拍摄。家族中最内围的水星，因为太靠近太阳而无法分辨，而火星则很遗憾的淹没在相机光学系统散射的阳光里。此外，小而黯淡、当时的位置比海王星近太阳的冥王星，并不在拍照的范围内。2024年，作为美国国家航空航天局最长寿、最遥远航天器的旅行者1号航天器，在240亿公里远处的星际空间里曳航。

明日的图片: galaxy vs grain of sand