Voyager: “We are approaching the solar system’s final frontier”

Here’s a short informative video from Science at Nasa on the indications that Voyager 1 is about to enter into the vastness of interstellar space.  (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) Space, remember, is very very big. And on that note, because I can, here again is some wondrous time-lapse video of the night-sky above the ESO Very Large Telescope array [VLT], in Chile, from NikoBustos. [Video credit: ESO/José Francisco Salgado (josefrancisco.org)] Or even this [Video credit: ESO/S. Guisard (www.eso.org/~sguisard) ESO/José Francisco Salgado (josefrancisco.org)] And, of course, the Milky …

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Voyager: “It’s bubbly out there.”

The Guardian’s GrrlScientist picked up on the 30-something Voyager probes’ latest scientific discovery on humanity’s farthest journey.  New view of the heliosheath. Red and blue spirals are the gracefully curving magnetic field lines of orthodox models. New data from Voyager add a magnetic froth to the mix. Image: NASA Here’s the YouTube version of the ScienceatNasa video posted at the Guardian. And if that explanation was a little too pink and fluffy for you, try this different version of the same …

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“It did its grand tour past the planets and it just goes on, on this voyage of discovery.”

The farthest man-made object from Earth, at some 17.4 billion kilometres, Nasa’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is still performing acrobatics 30-odd years after it was launched.  From the BBC report Voyager is executing a series of roll manoeuvres to get one of its instruments into the optimum position to measure particles sweeping away from the Sun. Controllers at the US space agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, report a perfect response from the probe. “I liken Voyager to an old car,” …

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