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TheFamily Portrait, or sometimesPortrait of the Planets, is an image of theSolar System acquired byVoyager 1 on February 14, 1990, from a distance of approximately 6 billion km (40 AU; 3.7 billion mi) from Earth. It features individual frames of six planets and a partial background indicating their relative positions. The picture is amosaic of 60 frames.[1] The frames used to compose the image were the last photographs taken by either Voyager spacecraft (which continued to relay other telemetry afterward). The frames were also the source of the famousPale Blue Dot image of theEarth. AstronomerCarl Sagan, who was part of the Voyager imaging team, campaigned for many years to have the pictures taken.[2][failed verification]
Sixplanets are visible in the mosaic, from left to right:Jupiter,Earth,Venus,Saturn,Uranus, andNeptune. TheSun, also a point of light at this distance, is included in the image. Three (then) planets were missed.[3]Mercury was too close to the Sun to be seen.[4]Mars could not be detected by the Voyager cameras due to its position resulting in it only producing a thin crescent from the viewpoint of the spacecraft, andPluto (which, in 1990, was still considered a planet) was not included because its small size and distance from the Sun left it too dim to image.[3][4] Mars could have been imaged through a clear filter rather than the colored ones used, but by the time this was evident, the process was too far advanced to make the changes.[3]
The image does not have a unified appearance. The individual frames were acquired using various filters at varying exposures to bring out as much detail as possible in each. For example, the Sun was imaged with the darkest filter and shortest exposure available, to avoid damaging the Imaging Science Systemvidicon tubes. The majority of the frames were acquired in gray scale with the probe's Wide-Angle Camera, while the close-up views of each planet were acquired in color using the Narrow-Angle Camera.[4]
The image was acquired at a distance of approximately 40.11 AU (6.0 billion km; 3.7 billion mi) from Earth and approximately 32° above theecliptic plane.[4] Of the twoVoyager spacecraft,Voyager 1 was chosen to create the mosaic because its trajectory had taken it above the plane of the Solar System. Also, unlikeVoyager 2,Voyager 1 was in a position to view Jupiter free of light disturbances by the Sun's glare. In 2013, a reverse image was taken ofVoyager 1, using radio telescopes.Voyager 1 cannot be seen in visible light, but its radio signal is very bright compared to most natural objects studied by radio telescopes.[5]
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