APOD: Solar System Portrait (2015 Feb 14)

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APOD: Solar System Portrait (2015 Feb 14)

Post by APOD Robot » Sat Feb 14, 2015 5:06 am

Image Solar System Portrait

Explanation: On another Valentine's Day 25 years ago, cruising four billion miles from the Sun, the Voyager 1 spacecraft looked back one last time 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 gas 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.

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Re: APOD: Solar System Portrait (2015 Feb 14)

Post by ta152h0 » Sat Feb 14, 2015 5:33 am

I remember that in AWST
Wolf Kotenberg

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Re: APOD: Solar System Portrait (2015 Feb 14)

Post by Dustspeck » Sat Feb 14, 2015 10:48 am

Looking at this APOD I feel extremely insignificant.

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Re: APOD: Solar System Portrait (2015 Feb 14)

Post by AstroHokie » Sat Feb 14, 2015 12:28 pm

It is amazing and humbling when a spot on the computer screen is larger that the earth in this image... Wow quite an adventure and a journey... Thanks NASA!

hoohaw

Re: APOD: Solar System Portrait (2015 Feb 14)

Post by hoohaw » Sat Feb 14, 2015 1:43 pm

How was Voyager smart enough to know not to include Pluto?

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Re: APOD: Solar System Portrait (2015 Feb 14)

Post by BDanielMayfield » Sat Feb 14, 2015 2:07 pm

hoohaw wrote:How was Voyager smart enough to know not to include Pluto?
Sorta funny, but not :lol2: worthy. :ssmile: I'm sure the JPL guys & gals would have if there was any chance of recording any light from tiny Pluto.
Just as zero is not equal to infinity, everything coming from nothing is illogical.

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Re: APOD: Solar System Portrait (2015 Feb 14)

Post by Chris Peterson » Sat Feb 14, 2015 3:48 pm

AstroHokie wrote:It is amazing and humbling when a spot on the computer screen is larger that the earth in this image... Wow quite an adventure and a journey... Thanks NASA!
That said, this is true for almost every astronomical image posted here- in most cases the pixel scale is much, much smaller than in today's image!
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Re: APOD: Solar System Portrait (2015 Feb 14)

Post by bystander » Sat Feb 14, 2015 4:49 pm

hoohaw wrote: How was Voyager smart enough to know not to include Pluto?
APOD Robot wrote:
Closer to the Sun than Neptune at the time, small, faint Pluto's position was not covered.
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alive to the gentle breeze of communication, and please stop being such a jerk.
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Re: APOD: Solar System Portrait (2015 Feb 14)

Post by Boomer12k » Sat Feb 14, 2015 5:19 pm

So we are just a few dots in space.....

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Re: APOD: Solar System Portrait (2015 Feb 14)

Post by peepers » Sat Feb 14, 2015 5:35 pm

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

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Re: APOD: Solar System Portrait (2015 Feb 14)

Post by Chris Peterson » Sat Feb 14, 2015 6:13 pm

Boomer12k wrote:So we are just a few dots in space.....
At the scale of some of the APOD images, entire galaxies are just a few dots in space. Not sure what that makes us...
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Re: APOD: Solar System Portrait (2015 Feb 14)

Post by simple minded » Sat Feb 14, 2015 6:20 pm

Chris Peterson wrote:
Boomer12k wrote:So we are just a few dots in space.....
At the scale of some of the APOD images, entire galaxies are just a few dots in space. Not sure what that makes us...
Participants! :D

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Re: APOD: Solar System Portrait (2015 Feb 14)

Post by BMAONE23 » Sat Feb 14, 2015 6:55 pm

simple minded wrote:
Chris Peterson wrote:
Boomer12k wrote:So we are just a few dots in space.....
At the scale of some of the APOD images, entire galaxies are just a few dots in space. Not sure what that makes us...
Participants! :D
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Re: APOD: Solar System Portrait (2015 Feb 14)

Post by Ron-Astro Pharmacist » Sat Feb 14, 2015 7:49 pm

BMAONE23 wrote:So we are just a few dots in space.....
On the scale of the unobservable universe maybe somewhere between a sentient string and a crazy quark?

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140112.html

Actually using the Scale of the Universe – a cranium the size of uranium :wink:
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Re: APOD: Solar System Portrait (2015 Feb 14)

Post by ta152h0 » Sat Feb 14, 2015 9:47 pm

some of the things I have said here definitely make me a quark, and I think the white spot on Ceres is a recent collision. Now pass me an ice cold one......
Wolf Kotenberg

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Re: APOD: Solar System Portrait (2015 Feb 14)

Post by BMAONE23 » Sat Feb 14, 2015 11:12 pm

ta152h0 wrote:some of the things I have said here definitely make me a quark, and I think the white spot on Ceres is a recent collision. Now pass me an ice cold one......
Charmed, I'm sure

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Re: APOD: Solar System Portrait (2015 Feb 14)

Post by Beyond » Sun Feb 15, 2015 12:53 am

BMAONE23 wrote:
ta152h0 wrote:some of the things I have said here definitely make me a quark, and I think the white spot on Ceres is a recent collision. Now pass me an ice cold one......
Charmed, I'm sure
Even if he's the proprietor of a bar?
To find the Truth, you must go Beyond.

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Re: APOD: Solar System Portrait (2015 Feb 14)

Post by LocalColor » Sun Feb 15, 2015 12:59 am

Thank you Voyager, happy wandering.

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Re: APOD: Solar System Portrait (2015 Feb 14)

Post by DavidLeodis » Sun Feb 15, 2015 1:47 pm

In the information brought up through the "last time" link I found this to be very interesting as I had never thought of that:-

"Question: Are the distance counters rolling backwards? Answer: Often they are, and it's actually not an error. This is caused by the fact that Earth moves around the sun more quickly than either Voyager spacecraft is departing from Earth. So, at certain times of the year, the distance between Earth and each Voyager actually decreases."

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Re: APOD: Solar System Portrait (2015 Feb 14)

Post by Chris Peterson » Sun Feb 15, 2015 3:25 pm

DavidLeodis wrote:In the information brought up through the "last time" link I found this to be very interesting as I had never thought of that:-

"Question: Are the distance counters rolling backwards? Answer: Often they are, and it's actually not an error. This is caused by the fact that Earth moves around the sun more quickly than either Voyager spacecraft is departing from Earth. So, at certain times of the year, the distance between Earth and each Voyager actually decreases."
Like those planetary retrogrades that were such a problem for the geocentrists.
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Re: APOD: Solar System Portrait (2015 Feb 14)

Post by ta152h0 » Sun Feb 15, 2015 8:11 pm

wonder if they still exist !
Wolf Kotenberg

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Re: APOD: Solar System Portrait (2015 Feb 14)

Post by BDanielMayfield » Mon Feb 16, 2015 12:41 am

ta152h0 wrote:wonder if they still exist !
Voyagers I and II? Certainly. We're still getting data from them as they move through areas of the solar system where the Sun's solar wind piles up against the interstellar wind.
Just as zero is not equal to infinity, everything coming from nothing is illogical.

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Re: APOD: Solar System Portrait (2015 Feb 14)

Post by Ron-Astro Pharmacist » Mon Feb 16, 2015 4:48 pm

ta152h0 wrote:wonder if they still exist !
They exist I suppose.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Geocentrism

What do they think? The Earth holds still and the rest of the universe moves around like the gears in a Wankel engine.
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Re: APOD: Solar System Portrait (2015 Feb 14)

Post by bystander » Mon Feb 16, 2015 6:12 pm

JPL: Reflections on the Pale Blue Dot
Click to play embedded YouTube video.
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