Family Portrait (Voyager)

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The "family portrait" of the Solar system taken by Voyager 1

The Family Portrait, or Portrait of the Planets is an image of the Solar System, created from 60 individual frames, spread over a length of six metres, taken by Voyager 1 spacecraft on February 14, 1990; the last pictures taken by the spacecraft before it began its mission into interstellar space. It is the source of the famous "Pale Blue Dot" image of the Earth. Astronomer Carl Sagan, who was part of the Voyager imaging team, campaigned for many years to have the pictures taken.

The images were shot from a distance of about six billion kilometres (about 4 billion miles) and an angle of 32 degrees above the ecliptic plane. Of the two Voyager spacecraft, Voyager 1 was chosen for the family portrait because its flightpath had taken it out towards the Solar System's north pole and thus, unlike its sister, Voyager 2, was in a position to view Jupiter free from the Sun's glare.

Seven celestial bodies are visible in the mosaic. They are, from right to left: Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, the Sun, Venus, Earth and Jupiter. Mars, Pluto and Mercury were too small to resolve at this scale.

The image does not have a natural look. This is because the individual photographs were taken at varying exposures and through various filters to bring out as much detail as possible. The Sun was taken with the darkest filter and the shortest exposure to avoid damage to the craft's vidicon tube. The majority of the images are wide-angle, but the close-ups of the planets themselves (seen alongside) are narrow-angle images.