Voyager approaching edge of our Solar System. Wow.

The Voyager probes are pretty amazing.

Many of the instruments on board the probes have been turned off to prevent exceeding power demands from the RTG, which as time passes produces less power. Only 7 instruments are still working on Voyager 1.

I find Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (the power source) just as incredibly amazing as the probe itself - 31 years have passed and the thing is still providing power!

I wonder what the view would be like looking back towards the sun..
 
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Voyager 1 is not heading towards any particular star, but in about 40,000 years it will pass within 1.6 light years of the star AC+79 3888 in the constellation Camelopardalis. That star is generally moving towards our Solar System at about 119 kilometers per second
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Space just blows my mind.

It is a shame there isn't the funding for more probes. Imagine the kind of probe that could be made using today's technology and what that could feedback about the solar system in the next 50 years.
 
I think it's amazing that it's SO ridiculously far away, and yet it isn't anywhere near even leaving our galaxy. Then to think that there are estimated to be 125 billion other galaxies out there. It's incredibly mind boggling.
 
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mulpsmebeauty said:
I was surprised to read that its radio signals only take 16 hours to get back to earth; I wasn't aware they travelled anything like this fast. I'd thought we'd have been getting data that was months old.
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Radio signals travel at the speed of light.

Speed of light = 300,000 km/s.

Voyager is 17400 million km from Earth.

17400mil divided by speed of light (0.3mil km/s) = 58000 seconds

58000 / 60 = 966 mins

966 mins / 60 = 16.1hrs.
 
Guest2 said:
So what happens when it hits the stuff that looks like orange flame 'bow shock' does it just melt?

How does it transmit these signals/pictures 17.4 billion kms back to earth?

When was it launched? - must have taken a few years to get there, that or its really really fast!

Its still got quite a while to reach one light year (9,454,254,955,488 km apparently)
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The flames depicting the bow shock are what you would call artistic licence.

With a radio transmitter:p

1977

Seeing as it is only 16 light hours out after 33 years getting to 1 light year out will take a very long time.

It is wholly possible that the probe will out live all human artefacts on Earth.
 
My favourite two space facts blow my mind every time.

If Proxima Centauri and our Sun were the size of grains of sand, they would be 5 miles apart by scale of distance.

If the Earth was 1cm in diameter, the sun would be around 1.1 metres in diameter and the largest known star Canis Majoris would be over 2km in diameter.

We are so insignificant it seems.
 
What amazes me is going from the smallest meaningful size (the planck length ~10^-34m) to our size (~1m) is a bigger scale change than going from our size to the size of the observable universe (~10^27m). Our bodies are a good 4 orders of magnitude above the logarithmic halfway point.

This means that comparing the size of the visible universe to something 0.1mm in size (say a speck of dust) is the same as comparing that speck of dust to the smallest meaningful thing (possibly strings) in the realm of the quantum foam.
 
A simulation of what the Solar System would look like if Voyager 1 turned its cameras backward from its current position as it sails into interstellar space.

Narrow FOV:
earthfromfarv1.jpg


Wide FOV:
ssfromv1.jpg


An amazing accomplishment, its jsut impossible to comprehend the numbers. Imagine running a mile. Or even driving one mile. How long does it take you? Well this probe is doing 38 THOUSAND of them in one hour :eek:
 
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