Photos of the Solar System
Join All About Space’s tour of some of the very best images of our neighbouring bodies
1 SOLAR PROMINENCE
Date taken: 2012
Taken by: The Solar Dynamics Observatory
If you take a brief glimpse of the Sun through thin clouds, all you’ll see is a white disc, perhaps with a few small, dark sunspots spattered across it. But the filtered cameras of solar observatories orbiting Earth show the Sun is a very active, very dynamic object. This image taken by the SDO shows a prominence, a huge loop of plasma, erupting up off the Sun’s surface and billowing out millions of miles into space.
2 URANUS WITH BACKGROUND GALAXIES
Date taken: 2023
Taken by: The James Webb Space Telescope
Although it has been photographed by Hubble for almost 40 years, the most impressive images we have of Uranus are still those taken by the Voyager 2 probe as it raced past the planet in January 1986, just two days before the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded after liftoff. But in 2023 the James Webb Space Telescope took this stunning new view of this distant ice giant in a sky dotted with stars and strewn with faraway galaxies.
3 NEPTUNE
Date taken: 2023
Taken by: Webb
Neptune is the most distant planet in the Solar System, and when Webb turned its cameras on it the images it took were genuinely stunning. They not only showed the ice giant’s icy rings, atmospheric bands and clouds in amazing detail, but the many background galaxies surrounding the planet too. And that’s not a bright foreground star blazing close to Neptune – that’s its largest moon Triton.
4 CAPE VERDE, VICTORIA CRATER, MARS
Date taken: 2006
Taken by: Opportunity
In early 2004, twin rovers landed on the Red Planet thousands of miles apart. For years Opportunity crossed a vast Martian desert, hopping between craters. When it arrived at Victoria crater it saw this stunning view. The steep-sided promontory jutting out into the crater on the left is Cape Verde, and Opportunity drove down past it briefly, hoping to reach the crater’s floor, before turning back to prevent being damaged by rocks falling from its crumbling sides.
5 MARS
Date taken: 1976
Taken by: Viking 1
The first grainy images of Mars’ cratered surface taken by the Mariner probes dashed our hopes of it being a living planet. Years later the more advanced Viking orbiters revealed the true beauty of the Red Planet with images like this, showing the enormous Valles Marineris, or ‘Mariner Valley’, stretching across its disc. More than 4,000 kilometres (2,485 miles) long, 200 kilometres (124 miles) wide and up to seven kilometres
