14 DAY TRIAL // Today might be all about love and romance for thousands of guys and gals but, for NASA astronomers, this February 14 is all about that space.
Not to beat about the bush, this Saturday marks the 25th anniversary of an iconic portrait of the Solar System that NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft obtained back on February 14, 1990.
On that day, Voyager 1 looked back at our Solar System from a jaw-dropping 40 astronomical units away and successfully imaged Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter, Venus and Earth.
Just to put things into perspective, it must be said that one astronomical unit, which is the distance between Earth and the Sun, is roughly 93 million miles (150 million kilometers).
Hence the fact that the portraits that NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft, available below, aren't exactly the clearest or the brightest ever to hit the public eye.
Even cooler, NASA scientists say that these space images that Voyager 1 delivered on February 14, 1990, are the last ones that the spacecraft beamed back to Earth.
The reason why just six planets are included in this portrait is because, at that time, Mars was too dark, Pluto was too dim and Mercury was flying too close to the Sun.
The Voyager 1 spacecraft launched back in 1977. The probe now finds itself at a distance of about 130 astronomical units from Earth. In fact, it was in 2012 that it reached interstellar space.
Although it is still operational and occasionally communicates with our planet, the spacecraft can no longer snap space images. Thus, all it can beam back is data about interstellar space.
