Images

The Solar System Simulator is part of a Space Library created by NASA, JPL, and CALTECH. You will find images and programs which will help you visualize the solar system using computer graphics. You provide the information for the solar system elements and perspective using a form with drop-down menus, and you're off on a visual journey to aid in your understanding of our solar system. If you were lucky enough to have clear skies and a telescope on Thanksgiving Day, November 23, 2000, at 05:00 GMT you could have gotten a view of the "Great Red Spot" and Jupiter's moon Io in a perspective that resembles the graphic used to illustrate this segment.

 Source: Courtesy Jet Propulsion Laboratory

On Feb. 14, 1990, the cameras of Voyager 1 were pointed back toward the Sun and took a series of pictures of the various members of the solar system that were then within view. Thirty-nine wide-angle frames link together six of the planets of our solar system in this mosaic. Outermost Neptune is 30 times further from the Sun than is Earth. Our Sun is seen as the bright object in the center of the circle of frames. Voyager 1 made several images of the inner solar system from a distance of approximately 4 billion miles and about 32 degrees above the ecliptic plane, making this the first ever "portrait" of our solar system as seen from the outside. For more information and the individual frames shown in this diagram, see the link below.

Source: National Space Science Data Center, Solar System Family Portrait, Image ID: family_diagram.jpg