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As it turns out, sungazing isn’t the only thing NASA’s solar spacecraft does.
Three missions that focus on the activities of our nearest star – Parker solar probe, the Observatory of Solar and Terrestrial Relations (STEREO) and Solar orbiter (a partnership with the European Space Agency) – captured incredible images showing multiple worlds in our solar system.
These spacecraft fly through different areas of our neighborhood in a quest to understand solar phenomena such as the extreme heat of the sun’s outer atmosphere, the distribution of dust in our solar system, or the generation of solar wind – the constant flow of particles coming from our sun. But every spacecraft has captured a breathtaking view of the planets as NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland shared in a recent press release.
Solar orbiter
This joint mission with ESA will eventually leave the plane of the solar system to study the poles of the sun. The spacecraft first transmitted test images in July 2020, about five months after its launch.
On November 18, a particularly stunning image happened when Solar Orbiter captured three planets in the same view. From left to right, you can see Venus (which looks extremely bright when the sun bounces off the planet’s clouds), Uranus, Earth, and Mars. The sun is just out of sight of the image on the right side of the frame.
Rebound! Turns out the planet Uranus is also visible in our #SolarOrbiter video 😄In the thread below @markmccaughrean explains how she was found Thanks, Cosmic Detectives! 🕵️♀️🕵️♂️ # science #CitizenScience #Venus #Earth #Mars #Uranus https://t.co/ZBj3LMOat1January 28, 2021
Solar Orbiter was approximately 155.7 million miles (250.6 million kilometers) from Earth when the data was transmitted, which is just under double the distance from sun to earth, or two astronomical units (AU). A single AU is about 150 million km.
Parker solar probe
Our #ParkerSolarProbe spacecraft saw six of the planets on June 7, 2020, as it circled the Sun on its fifth close solar flyby. pic.twitter.com/pkWPcMFRohJanuary 26, 2021
NASA’s Parker solar probe will fly closer to the sun than any other spacecraft to date as it attempts to capture the “origin story” of the solar wind. In this incredible wide field image from June 7, 2020 (days before a close approach to the sun), he photographed six of the planets in our solar system.
From left to right, these are Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, Venus, Earth and Mercury. The spacecraft was approximately one AU from Earth at the time of imaging, 98.3 million miles (158 million kilometers) away.
STEREO
The only operational STEREO spaceship – one of a pair that circled the sun behind and in front of the Earth in our planet’s approximate orbit as of 2014 – also looked at the planets on June 7, 2020. In this image you can see the same ones six planets than Parker on the same date, but from a different point of view in the solar system.
From left to right appear Mercury, Mars, Venus, Earth, Saturn and Jupiter. The dark columns in the image are due to the detector being saturated, which is a combination of the long exposure time with the relative brightness of the planets to the background stars, according to NASA.
STEREO’s normal mission is to study the sun outdoor atmosphere, or corona, with solar wind, to improve solar weather forecasting.
Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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