Voyager’s original plan did not include these images, but the late Carl Sagan, part of the Voyager imaging team, had an idea. A few key members did not make it in: Mars had little sunlight, Mercury was too close to the Sun, and dwarf planet Pluto turned out too dim. This “family portrait” captures Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter, Earth and Venus from Voyager 1’s unique vantage point. “Twenty-five years ago, Voyager 1 looked back toward Earth and saw a ‘ pale blue dot,’ ” an image that continues to inspire wonderment about the spot we call home,” said Ed Stone, project scientist for the Voyager mission, based at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. Dubbed “The Pale Blue Dot”, the image is part of a family portrait - a snapshot of our solar system - from beyond the gas giant Neptune. 14, 1990, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft turned back towards the Earth, and snapped the first image of Earth taken from a distance of 3.7 billion miles (6 billion kilometers). Twenty-five years ago, a space probe took one of the most important images of all time.
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