The Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft explored Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune before starting their journey toward interstellar space. Here you’ll find some of those images, including “The Pale Blue Dot” – famously described by Carl Sagan – and what are still the only up-close images of Uranus and Neptune.
Photography of Jupiter began in January 1979, when images of the brightly banded planet already exceeded the best taken from Earth. They took more than 33,000 pictures of Jupiter and its five major satellites.
Findings:
Erupting volcanoes on Jupiter’s moon Io, which has 100 times the volcanic activity of Earth.
Better understanding of important physical, geological, and atmospheric processes happening in the planet, its satellites and magnetosphere.
Jupiter’s turbulent atmosphere with dozens of interacting hurricane-like storm systems.
Saturn
The Saturn encounters occurred nine months apart, in November 1980 and August 1981. The two encounters increased our knowledge and altered our understanding of Saturn. The extended, close-range observations provided high-resolution data far different from the picture assembled during centuries of Earth-based studies.
Findings:
Saturn’s atmosphere is almost entirely hydrogen and helium.
Subdued contrasts and color differences on Saturn could be a result of more horizontal mixing or less production of localized colors than in Jupiter’s atmosphere.
An indication of an ocean beneath the cracked, icy crust of Jupiter’s moon Europa.
Winds blow at high speeds in Saturn. Near the equator, the Voyagers measured winds about 1,100 miles an hour.
Uranus
The Voyager 2 spacecraft flew closely past distant Uranus, the seventh planet from the Sun. At its closest, the spacecraft came within 50,600 miles of Uranus’s cloud tops on Jan. 24, 1986. Voyager 2 radioed thousands of images and voluminous amounts of other scientific data on the planet, its moons, rings, atmosphere, interior and the magnetic environment surrounding Uranus.
Findings:
Revealed complex surfaces indicative of varying geologic pasts.
Detected 11 previously unseen moons.
Uncovered the fine detail of the previously known rings and two newly detected rings.
Showed that the planet’s rate of rotation is 17 hours, 14 minutes.
Found that the planet’s magnetic field is both large and unusual.
Determined that the temperature of the equatorial region, which receives less sunlight over a Uranian year, is nevertheless about the same as that at the poles.
Neptune
Voyager 2 became the first spacecraft to observe the planet Neptune in the summer of 1989. Passing about 3,000 miles above Neptune’s north pole, Voyager 2 made its closest approach to any planet since leaving Earth 12 years ago. Five hours later, Voyager 2 passed about 25,000 miles from Neptune’s largest moon, Triton, the last solid body the spacecraft had the opportunity to study.
Findings:
Discovered Neptune’s Great Dark Spot
Found that the planet has strong winds, around 1,000 miles per hour
Saw geysers erupting from the polar cap on Neptune’s moon Triton at -390 degrees Fahrenheit
Solar System Portrait
This narrow-angle color image of the Earth, dubbed ‘Pale Blue Dot’, is a part of the first ever ‘portrait’ of the solar system taken by Voyager 1.
The spacecraft acquired a total of 60 frames for a mosaic of the solar system from a distance of more than 4 billion miles from Earth and about 32 degrees above the ecliptic.
From Voyager’s great distance, Earth is a mere point of light, less than the size of a picture element even in the narrow-angle camera.
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.” – Carl Sagan
Both spacecraft will continue to study ultraviolet sources among the stars, and their fields and particles detectors will continue to search for the boundary between the Sun’s influence and interstellar space. The radioisotope power systems will likely provide enough power for science to continue through 2025, and possibly support engineering data return through the mid-2030s. After that, the two Voyagers will continue to orbit the center of the Milky Way.
