The Solar System

Six portraits of our own neighbourhood, fifty-four years apart. The 1972 Blue Marble was shot by the Apollo 17 crew on the way to the Moon, the last time a human being was far enough out to hold the whole planet in one frame. Voyager 1 turned around from about 6 billion kilometres out and photographed Earth as a single pixel, the image later named Pale Blue Dot.

Pluto's mottled heart came from New Horizons' 2015 flyby, the first close look any spacecraft ever took of it. Venus arrived differently again: its cloud cover never clears, so the Magellan mission mapped the surface underneath by radar instead of light. Different distances, different instruments, one solar system.