淡蓝色圆点

2020 February 14

The Pale Blue Dot
Image Credit: Voyager Project, NASA, JPL-Caltech

Explanation: On Valentine’s Day in 1990, cruising four billion miles from the Sun, the Voyager 1 spacecraft looked back one last time to make the first ever Solar System family portrait. The portrait consists of the Sun and six planets in a 60 frame mosaic made from a vantage point 32 degrees above the ecliptic plane. Planet Earth was captured within a single pixel in this single frame. It’s the pale blue dot within the sunbeam just right of center in this reprocessed version of the now famous view from Voyager. Astronomer Carl Sagan originated the idea of using Voyager’s camera to look back toward home from a distant perspective. Thirty years later, on this Valentine’s day, look again at the pale blue dot.

淡蓝色圆点
影像来源：Voyager Project, NASA, JPL-Caltech

说明：在1990年的情人节，旅行者1号宇宙飞船在距离太阳40亿英里的地方最后一次回首，拍摄了第一张太阳系家族像。图像由从黄道面上方32°的一个合适位置拍摄的60幅照片拼合而成，包括了太阳和6颗行星。在拍摄到地球的那帧照片中，地球只有1个像素大小。在经过重新处理的这张旅行者号视角照片里，中心右侧太阳光束中的那个淡蓝色小点就是地球。天文学家卡尔·萨根率先提出利用旅行者号的相机从一个远距离的视角回望拍摄太阳系内部的想法。在30年后的这个情人节，让我们再看一遍这个淡蓝色的圆点吧。