Ladies and Gentlemen Voyager 1 Has Left the Solar System

[DaveC426913]

Many stars are found in the four arms of the Milky Way galaxy (duh). I think ours is a bit of an oddball, because instead of residing in one arm, it orbits through all four.

Respectfully,
Steve

I am not sure that makes it an oddball. I believe the spiral arms are not fixed structures, but density variations, like the bars.

I should get a reference for that though.

 

[BadBrain]

I am not sure that makes it an oddball. I believe the spiral arms are not fixed structures, but density variations, like the bars.

I should get a reference for that though.

Yep!

I'm thinking "zones of resonance" to describe the arms.

 

[PhilDSP]

Actually, wiki has some interesting figures on its movement in the page's sidebar:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way

The Apex of the Sun's Way, or the solar apex, is the direction that the Sun travels through space in the Milky Way. The general direction of the Sun's Galactic motion is towards the star Vega near the constellation of Hercules, at an angle of roughly 60 sky degrees to the direction of the Galactic Center.

Does this mean that since Voyager is encountering the solar system's bow wave (so to speak) where energy streams at an angle normal to the solar system's trajectory (solar apex), that Voyager's trajectory is within the hemisphere pointing at the star Vega and presumably closer towards Vega than the outer rim of the hemisphere?

 

[DaveC426913]

Does this mean that since Voyager is encountering the solar system's bow wave (so to speak) where energy streams at an angle normal to the solar system's trajectory (solar apex), that Voyager's trajectory is within the hemisphere pointing at the star Vega and presumably closer towards Vega than the outer rim of the hemisphere?

You could define such a hemisphere with Vega at its centre - but it would be a hemisphere 25 light years in radius and be dotted with a dozen other, closer stars. I don;t see what physical significance it would have.

 

[JamesEllison]

That is truly amazing :D three cheers for Maths!

 

[Hercuflea]

Wow. That sucker was launched the year I graduated from high school. What the hell has kept it going?

google google google



13 more years!

That is freaking awesome. I'll be 66 years old, and probably ready for the permanap myself.

:zzz:

Someday hopefully we can pick it up and give it a ride home on a nuclear fusion or antimatter propulsion craft.

 

[Smalltalk]

I'm glad at least some of our race views this as important. This is the epitome of what our curiosity is capable of!

To me it is very important. There are only a few remnants of the human race and of the Earth that will be left around after the Sun shifts into a Red Giant and encompasses the Earth.

As of now, this is what will be left from the entire history of humanity.

• Pioneer 10
• Pioneer 11
• Voyager 2
• Voyager 1
• New Horizons

 

[mfb]

To me it is very important. There are only a few remnants of the human race and of the Earth that will be left around after the Sun shifts into a Red Giant and encompasses the Earth.

As of now, this is what will be left from the entire history of humanity.

• Pioneer 10
• Pioneer 11
• Voyager 2
• Voyager 1
• New Horizons

Cassini and Huygens? Saturn should survive the end of the sun.
Dawn, Rosetta, NEAR Shoemaker and similar asteorid probes could survive, too.
And there is still a lot of time left to add more objects.

 

[Smalltalk]

Ahh yes, those should be around. Now we just need to make more and more.

 

[Bobbywhy]

Ahh yes, those should be around. Now we just need to make more and more.

Just curious: Why should we?

 

[MathJakob]

What amazes me most about this is that as I'm sitting here at my desk that man made object just keeps on getting further and further away, to look up at the night sky right now and to think that somewhere out there is the voyager just plowing on forward.

11.5billion miles and counting, seems so far yet on a cosmic scale it hasn't moved much at all. 24.7trillion miles to the next closest star...

 

[rexregisanimi]

This may have already been mentioned, but Voyager hasn't left the Solar System entirely - it still needs to make it's way outside of the Sun's magnetosphere.

 

[marcus]

Cassini and Huygens? Saturn should survive the end of the sun.
Dawn, Rosetta, NEAR Shoemaker and similar asteorid probes could survive, too.
And there is still a lot of time left to add more objects.

Speaking of Dawn, the spacecraft is now en route to Ceres, as I understand. Ceres has been conjectured to have a water ice mantle comprising about as much as is in all the fresh water bodies of earth. I'm not sure about this or what it would amount to, you may have more recent information.

Ceres has appealed to me for some time as a nice place to live (if as conjectured) because one could find shelter by tunneling down into the water ice. It might be quite lovely, if there were a source of artificial light, together with some plant and animal life.

Does that make sense to you?
===================

Rosetta, if I remember correctly, is supposed to land on a comet and bolt itself to the surface so that it can ride in towards the sun with the comet and observe how things go as they whip around the sun. This seems to me like a beautiful exploit. I wish it luck. It will be there as the surface begins to boil away to make the comet's tail.
===================

I suppose that humanity's aspirations will live on in its robotic craft which are just now beginning to populate the solar system. And there will still be places for meat people to live too. A stubborn and ingenious life form does not have to be afraid of its star's ramped up luminosity (or even its eventual red giant phase, should it come to that.)