As the maven at the center of the Solar System , the Sun holds a lot of our care . Many mission are presently get under one’s skin up unaired and personal with our star – last class provided some of themost dramatic images of the Sunever see – but every so often the " eyes " of these spacecraft turn back to Earth and offer a view of our planet we rarely get to see .
Three Sun - study mission – NASA and ESA’sSolar Orbitor , NASA’sParker Solar Probe , and NASA ’s Solar and Terrestrial Relations Observatory ( STEREO ) – have done just that , capturing our major planet , alongside some of our close neighbors , from their unique advantage point across the inner Solar System .
All three of these missions have a distinct compass so their view are very different not just from what we see on Earth , but each other . The Solar Orbitor ’s Heliospheric Imager caught this exquisite scene of Venus , Earth , and Mars onNovember 18 , 2020 , from about 251 million kilometers ( 155.7 million miles ) away from Earth .
Venus is the brightest planet here , more or less 48 million kilometer ( 29.8 million knot ) away from the Solar Orbitor at that time . The spacecraft , which was only launch inFebruary 2020 , was on its way to Venus for its first somberness help flyby , which occur on December 27 . Using the satellite ’s gravity helps vary the spacecraft ’s arena and get it closer to the Sun . The Sun is out of systema skeletale but you could see its Inner Light shining away to the rightfulness of Earth and Mars .
The Parker Solar Probe ’s Wide - playing field Imager for Solar PRobe ( WISPR ) postulate this incredible portraiture ( below ) while it was making its closest access to the Sun on June 7 , 2020 .
WISPR ’s job is to take images of the solar corona and internal heliosphere , which it was doing during its perihelion , or tight approach , of its orbit around the Sun when its field of opinion swept away from the Sun and to the planets beyond . From left to right you could see Mars , Saturn , Jupiter , Venus , Earth , and Mercury , which of line look in the wrong purchase order from the Sun . Mercury , the innermost planet appear the furthest aside .
" We often think of look at our Solar System from the exterior in , and this countenance us the unequalled chance to see it from the inner out,“saidParker Solar Probe project scientist Nour Raouafi . " It ’s a view few spacecraft can ply , and Parker Solar Probe has give us an all unlike perspective on our place in space . ”
Also on June 7 , NASA ’s STEREO captured this view of most of our Solar System ’s planets . Because of its positioning in orbit , however , it show a very different linear perspective to the Parker Solar Probe . This time our neighbor appear in the more conversant order .
The Heliospheric Imagers on STEREO focuses on the Sun ’s outer atmosphere , the solar corona and winds , allowing scientists to study how material from the Sun travels out into the Solar System . According toNASA : " The dark columns in the figure are relate to impregnation on the legal instrument ’s detector , because of the brightness of the planets combined with the long photo metre . "
If you want to feel really small , check out thisincredible photoof a small , unimportant down in the mouth planet snapped by Voyager over 30 years ago .
