Although they focus on the star at the center of our solar system, some sun-seeing spacecraft have recently captured a unique view of the earth and other planets. Each mission has a clear path, so the perspectives differ from each other and from our view from the earth.
Solar Orbiter and the Parker Solar Probe carry instruments to study the sun and its influence on space. Among the instruments are low-light cameras that can detect the sun’s outer atmosphere and the solar wind. It is these instruments that made several planets pass through their fields of vision in 2020.
The image above shows Venus, Uranus, Earth and Mars, as observed by the Solar Orbiter Heliospheric Imager (SoloHI) on November 18, 2020. The spacecraft was about 251 million kilometers (156 million miles) away from Earth at the time; the sun was outside the picture frame on the right. To understand the placement of the planets in the picture, you can see this depiction of the spacecraft’s viewing angle.
Solar Orbiter is a joint mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA launched in February 2020. The spacecraft returned its first images in July 2020, including the closest view of the sun ever. SoloHI, one of the ten instruments on the spacecraft, looks to the side of the sun to observe the solar wind and the dust that fills the space between the planets.
While Parker Solar Probe orbited the Sun on June 7, 2020, its Wide-field Imager for Solar Probe instrument (WISPR) cut two picture frames (above) that captured six planets: Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, Venus, Earth and Mercury. .
WISPR takes pictures of the solar corona and the inner heliosphere in visible light, while also observing the solar wind and other structures as they approach and pass the spacecraft. The NASA spacecraft at the time was about 18.7 million kilometers from the sun and about 158 million kilometers from the earth. Look at a scheme of Parker’s position and field of view.
One of the spacecraft in NASA’s Observatory for Solar Power and Earth Relations (STEREO) also observed most planets on June 7, 2020. Look at the image here.
Visit our Earth from Afar collection for more views of our home planet in the broader context of our solar system.
Images courtesy of ESA / NASA / NRL / Solar Orbiter / SolOHI and Johns Hopkins APL / Naval Research Laboratory / Guillermo Stenborg and Brendan Gallagher. Story by Sarah Frazier and Miles Hatfield, NASA GSFC, and Michael Buckley, Johns Hopkins APL.