Image Cites

All planet images were scanned from NASA lithographs.  The lithographs contained the following information regarding the images shown on our WEB pages.

SUN- The picture of the sun was taken January 24, 1992. It is viewed from space at x-ray wavelengths. The image , as seen by the Soft X-ray Telescope on the Japan /US/UK Yohkoh Mission ( orbiting solar observatory), reveals the hot, three- dimensional geometry of the corona across the full disk of the Sun. The large bright areas are regions are where the Sun's magnetic field is so strong that it can trap hot gases even though the temperature of the regions are over 1 million degrees K. The dark areas are coronal holes, which are the orgin of streams of particles, called the high speed solar wind , that flows past Earth and through the solar system at about 700 kilometers per second.

MERCURY- The false color photomosaic of Mercury is composed of images taken by Mariner 10 as it flew by the planet after the first encounter in March 1974. The image shows the Caloris basin at the left of the terminator surrounded and and filled by younger smooth plains deposits. This 1,300 km diameter impact basin formed about 4 billion years ago when a large asteroid or comet struck Mercury. The smooth plains resemble the lunar maria, the smooth, dark lava plains that are concentrated on the moon's nearside. However, the Mercurian plains display less contract in reflectivity with heavily crater terrain shown on the right, top and bottom than is seen between the lunar maria (dark) and the lunar highland (light).

VENUS-This mosaic of Venus was composed from Magellan images taken during radar investigations from 1990- 1994, centered at 180o east longitude. Magellan spacecraft imaged more than 98% of Venus' surface at a resolution of about 100 meters. This image has an effective resolution of about 3 kilometers. Gaps in the Magellan coverage were filled with images from Earth- based Arecibo radar in a region roughly centered at 0o latitude and longitude and near the south pole. This mosaic was color- coded to represent elevation . Missing elevation data from the Magellan radar altimeter were filled with altimetry from the Venera spacecraft and the U.S. Pioneer Venus missions. Brown areas denote rough terrain; the dark blue areas are smooth surfaces or possibly areas covered with dust.

EARTH-This Appollo view of Earth was taken during a journey to the Moon in May, 1969.  While clouds obscure the Yucatan Peninsula, nearly all of Mexico north of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec is clearly visible.  The Gulf of California, Baja, and the San Joaquin Valley of California are identifiable as well.  In the upper right corner the northern polar cap appears with pressure fronts emanating to the south.

MOON-This photograph of the Moon was taken in December 1972 by the Apollo 17 mission, shortly after the spacecraft lef the Moon to return to Earth.  The view shows the full Moon.  The region at the right (abouth two-thirds of the total) is part of the Moon's far side, the side never seen from Earth.  The dark regions are the maria, which are covered with dark-colored basalt lava flows.

MARS-This full-disk view of Mars is a merge of a morphologic mosaic and a color/brightness mosaic taken by Viking Orbiter 1 in 1980.  

JUPITER-This processed color image of Jupiter was produced in 1990 by the U.S. Geological Survey from a Voyager image captured in 1979.  The colors have been enhanced to bring out detail.  

SATURN-This true-color image was assembled from Voyager 2 images obtained August 4, 1981, from a distance of 21 million kilometers (13 million miles) from the spacecraft.  

URANUS-This color image of Uranus was produced in 1986 by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.  Images obtained with blue, green, and orange filgers were combined and the color balance adjusted to simulate what the eye would normally see.

NEPTUNE-During 1989, the Voyager 2 narrow-angle camera was used to photograph Neptune almost continuously for two days.The image has been processed to enhance the visibility of features, at some sacrifice of color fidelity.

PLUTO-This is an artist's conception of the Pluto-Charon binary planet.  It was conceived and executed by Pat Rawlings of Science Applications International Corporation.

 

 

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