When Voyager took a picture of earth it was about 6 billion km away how come there were light flares?

Question

Where do those light flares come from 6 billion km away from earth ? That’s about 45 light days right? So well outside our solar system.

One in particular is as if its focused on earth (a narrow white band)

Even its just a sensor artifact it would be interesting to know what exactly could have caused such an artifact.

Picture in question for reference: https://imgur.com/a/fxSW38H

In: 0

Answer 1

The Sun is at the bottom of the picture. Those rays that appear in the photo are just artefacts caused by the camera’s optical system, kind of like lens flares.