Out there: NASA says its Voyager 1 probe has become first spacecraft to leave the solar system
By Associated Press, Updated: Thursday, September 12, 2:40 PM
LOS ANGELES — Voyager 1 has crossed a new frontier, becoming the first spacecraft ever to leave the solar system, NASA said Thursday.
Thirty-six years after it was launched from Earth on a tour of the outer planets, the plutonium-powered probe is more than 11 1/2 billion miles from the sun, cruising through interstellar space — the vast, cold emptiness between the stars, the space agency said.
Voyager 1 actually made its exit more than a year ago, according to NASA. But itÂ’s not as if thereÂ’s a dotted boundary line or a signpost out there, and it was not until recently that scientists with the space agency had enough evidence to say that the probe had finally plowed through the hot plasma bubble surrounding the planets and escaped the sunÂ’s influence.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...a9b094-1bd4-11e3-80ac-96205cacb45a_story.html
Voyager has left the Heliopause which is the boundary where outward pressure from the stream of charged particles (the solar wind) coming off the Sun meet the interstellar medium to the point where the pressure drops to zero. But Voyager 1 is still going through a series of magnetic bubbles that surround the Sun and beyond that may be a thing called the Oort Cloud where comets come from, though we cannot see that far to be sure of anything.. Voyager 1's trip was cut short after Saturn in November, 1980 and never made it to any other planets because at the last minute they decided to change course to take a look at Saturn's moon Titan. That turned out to be a lost cause (Titan is covered with an orange hydrocarbon smog) so they saw nothing, and that sent Voyager 1 out of the solar system from there.
But in a few months, you can take a look at it! Unlike Voyager 2 which is far into the Southern Hemisphere in the constellation Pavo where you need to be in the deep southern hemisphere to see, you CAN look at Voyager 1! It is in the late Spring sky right near the head of Hercules (he's upside down), right where the red line ends. This is not hard to find at all if you know the sky a little or consult a sky atlas. Just look for the two bright stars, Arcturus in Bootes (lower right) and Vega in Lyra (top of picture). Here is a segment of a chart I made a few months ago showing where to look:
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I think they'll follow Voyager 1 a few more years as long as they can until either the transmitter gives out (the nuclear reactor has already long outlasted its design), or the signal gets too weak to hear (whether it is responding to OUR signal to transmit or just gets too faint). They are close to that point I believe if not already past it. Voyager 1 is around 17 light/hours from Earth now.
Thank you so much for all that information. I loved the story about how there’s sort of an invisible barrier at the edge of our solar system. When voyagers went into it the level of radiation was high then suddenly it went away which meant it was finally outside our solar system.
Yesterday they were talking about planet 9 out at the edge and it puts all of the planets slightly off tilt. It may destroy all of the planets. And it’s so far away it’s not even confirmed yet? Huh? Please keep blowing my mind with science
Voyager 1 is now at least at the point to where the dominant environment seems to be the interstellar stream and so is no longer feeling any effects or influence from the Sun. As such, looking back, the Sun is now just one more faint star in its sky. In something like 80,000 years maybe it might make it out to the distance of the nearest star, but of course, it won't be anywhere near it, so for all practical purposes, will be lost forever and the chances of a Voyager ever being actually found are essentially almost zero. It will probably some day collide with a rock and be destroyed in the far distant future. But you never know. I could never imagine the possibility of some alien millions of years from now actually finding a gold phonograph record and figuring out from it how to play it back with a "space turntable" to extract vocal recordings and images, but then, Carl Sagan was a romantic.
Can you imagine someone sending you dozens of different foreign languages all saying hello in different tongues? And hoping to realize every word was saying the same thing but in a different way, rather than one contiguous message? Thought that was sort of a dumb idea.
As to planet 9, it has been mathematically postulated because such a body would explain several of the strange orbits of known Kuiper Belt Objects and it might also explain the 6° tilt of the solar system from the plane of the Sun. I'd say right now that the chances for it being real are GOOD and that it is sort of like a small "Uranus"--- an ice giant of mostly frozen methane, etc., gases surrounding a rocky core. But right now, best guesses as to where it could be cover an arc spanning nearly half the sky. Its close approach is still far beyond Neptune and its origin is probably either a smaller gaseous giant formed along with the rest of the original 30 or so planets that got flung out by a close approach with Jupiter, when Jupiter was much closer to the Sun, or it is an interstellar straggler that somehow came along, intersected with our solar system and got caught and picked up by the Sun. But it will never destroy or affect the other planets; all of the bodies have by now parked into long term stable and compatible orbits.
