Voyager 1 photographs the solar system from outside it
node
On its last day of imaging, Voyager 1 turned its cameras back towards the Sun and took about sixty frames covering most of the planetary system, including one in which Earth occupies less than a pixel. The observation had been argued for over several years by Carl Sagan against the objection — which was correct — that it would return no science. The cameras were switched off immediately afterwards to conserve power and have never been used since.
A node is not a place. Drawing it on a map would assert something about the world that no stored fact supports.
Read in · 1
Timeline
No dated observations are stored for this object. Atlas shows what was observed and when — it does not infer a history.
Connections · 3
- Voyager 1concerns
- Pale Blue Dotconcerns
- Carl Saganconcerns
Assembled narrative · 1
Assembled from 50 blocks · 1 evidence · 61 related
- Story
- On its last day of imaging, Voyager 1 turned its cameras back towards the Sun and took about sixty frames covering most of the planetary system, including one in which Earth occupies less than a pixel. The observation had been argued for over several years by Carl Sagan against the objection — which was correct — that it would return no science. The cameras were switched off immediately afterwards to conserve power and have never been used since.
- Knowledge
- Voyager 1
- Carl Sagan
- Pale Blue Dot
- Voyager 1 photographs the solar system from outside it
- Connections
- Voyager 1
- Pale Blue Dot
- Carl Sagan
- The Grand Tour alignment
- Voyager 2
- Multi-Hundred-Watt radioisotope thermoelectric generator
- Titan
- NASA Deep Space Network
- Gravity assist
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory
- Launch Complex 41, Cape Canaveral
- Jupiter
- Saturn
- Titan
- Voyager high-gain antenna
- Plasma Wave Subsystem (PWS)
- Titan IIIE-Centaur
- Edward C. Stone
- The Voyager Golden Record
- Carl Sagan
- Pale Blue Dot
- The full Grand Tour is cancelled and rebuilt as a two-spacecraft mission
- Voyager 1 launches
- Voyager 1 closest approach to Jupiter
- Active volcanism found on Io
- Voyager 1 passes Saturn and Titan, and leaves the plane of the planets
- Voyager 1 photographs the solar system from outside it
- Voyager 1 crosses the termination shock at about 94 AU
- Voyager 1 crosses the heliopause at 121.6 AU
- The 2012 crossing is confirmed from plasma oscillations
- Voyager 1's cosmic ray subsystem is switched off
- Voyager 1's low-energy charged particle instrument due for shutdown
- Voyager 1 reaches one light-day from Earth
- Carl Sagan
- Voyager 1
- Voyager 1 photographs the solar system from outside it
- The Voyager Golden Record
- Pale Blue Dot
- Voyager 1
- Voyager 1 photographs the solar system from outside it
- Evidence
- Sagan's account of the 14 February 1990 family-portrait observation, of his advocacy for taking it and of what the resulting image of Earth as a sub-pixel point signifies. V55 verification basis: NOT CONSULTED IN THIS RUN. The book is cited as the origin of the name and of the argument; no passage is quoted and no page reference is given, because none was checked.
Observed changes · 0
No public Signals are attached to this object. Signals show what changed and when it was observed — never a direction or a rank.
Actions
/atlas?object=EVT_PALE_BLUE_DOT&experience=EVT_PALE_BLUE_DOT