My wife tells me that the NYTimes ran, sometime this week, a photo transmitted from one of the Voyager space probes looking back towards the Sun and the Earth. For the life of me, I can’t find it on the Times’ web site, and it all sounds awful suspicious to me–I didn’t think the Voyagers were able to send back anything but mission status telemetry at this point.
Anyone have a clue what this might be?
In 1990 Voyager 1 took a series of photos of six of the planets (Mercury was too close to the Sun, and Mars and Pluto too faint). I can’t imagine that either Voyager could still image the Earth now, after another 12 years.
Amazingly enough, incidentally, both Voyagers are still returning useful science data.
This isn’t exactly what you’re talking about but a few years ago a different spacecraft took pictures of the earth and of the moon on its way to the asteroid belt, and the resulting photo is mind boggling. It’s in Astronomy picture of the day (apod) at this URL http://antwrp0.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap980129.html
This isn’t exactly what you’re talking about but a few years ago a different spacecraft took pictures of the earth and of the moon on its way to the asteroid belt, and the resulting photo is mind boggling. It’s in Astronomy picture of the day (apod) at this URL http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap980129.html
Voyager 1 also took the very first picture of the Earth and the Moon together as it left our neighborhood back in 1977. It is not nearly as pretty as the NEAR picture though.
Galileo also got a pretty shot in…
Any info on whether that Galileo shot is a “mosaic” shot like the NEAR one? The NEAR photo says the moon was brightened, but in the Galileo shot, it looks reasonably bright already.
Just curious.
The article referred to was about SETI. It can be seen here
If you are registered with NY Times (it’s free) you can click on the " [NASA Presses Its Search for Extraterrestrial Life] NASA Presses Its Search for Extraterrestrial Life" article. There is a picture showing our galaxy. Click on the picture and you will see the Voyager photo. Unfortunately, the date at the bottom of that photo can only be partly read - looks like it’s in the 1980s or 1990s.
Assuming the Moon and Earth were the same relative distance from Galileo as they were from NEAR, I think the Moon in the Galileo shot would have to be brightened just as it was in the NEAR one. There would have been no change in the Moon’s reflectivity, and no significant change in the Earth’s (certainly not enough to account for a five stop change in brightness).
That’s it, Canyon Surfer. ( http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/science/20020604_LIFE/index.html – inset shows “Earth as seen from the Voyager 1 spacecraft four billion miles away” ) Thanks. And thanks for all the other cool links, folks.