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Although they focus on the star at the center of our solar system, some Sun observing spacecraft have recently captured unique views of the Earth and other planets. Each mission has a separate orbit, so the perspectives are different from each other and from our perspective of Earth.
Solar Orbiter and the Parker solar probe both carry instruments to study the Sun and its influence on space. Among these instruments are low light cameras that can observe the outer atmosphere of the Sun and the solar wind. These are the instruments that saw several planets cross their fields of vision in 2020.
The image above shows Venus, Uranus, Earth, and Mars as observed by the Solar Orbiter (SoloHI) heliospheric imager on November 18, 2020. The spacecraft was approximately 251 million kilometers (156 million miles) from Earth at the time; the Sun was outside the frame of the image on the right. To understand the placement of the planets in the image, visualize this representation of the spacecraft’s viewing angle.
Solar Orbiter is a joint European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA mission that launched in February 2020. The spacecraft returned its first images in July 2020, including ever closer views of the Sun. SoloHI, one of the spacecraft’s ten instruments, looks towards the Sun to observe the solar wind and the dust that fills the space between the planets.
As Parker Solar Probe circled the Sun on June 7, 2020, its Solar Probe Wide Field Imaging Instrument (WISPR) snapped two image frames (above) that captured six planets: Mars, Saturn, Jupiter , Venus, Earth and Mercury.
WISPR takes images of the solar corona and inner heliosphere in visible light, while observing the solar wind and other structures as the spacecraft approaches and passes. The NASA spacecraft was then about 18.7 million kilometers (11.6 million miles) from the Sun and about 158 million kilometers (98 million miles) from Earth. See a diagram of Parker’s position and field of view.
One of the NASA Solar-Earth Relations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft also observed most of the planets on June 7, 2020. See this image here.
Visit our Earth from Afar collection for more views of our home planet in the larger 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.
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