Voyager 1 Set To Reach

[Davelrkn]

Yesterday Saturday 12th August Voyager 1 became the first Space Craft to reach 100AU from the Sun after 29 years in Space
Further info can be found on the Main Page of Heavens Above- See Links

[matt]

How many AU are there to the nearest star?;)

[beren]

268 000 AU :sadeyes:

[xelasnave]

Hey Au equals gold.. goldern Sun mmm
That is something else really. I am interested to see what happens to its speed as time goes by.
alex

[mickoking]

Wow. How bright would the sun be at that distance?

[Astroman]

Not very :P

[mickoking]

I got of my bum and worked out the answer for my self.

The Suns (Apparent) magnitude from earth =-26.72

at 100 AU the sun would appear 100^2=10000 times fainter which is 10 magnitudes.

Therefore voyager would see the sun as a mag -16.72 star. The full moon from earth is -12.7 :thumbsup:

[Davelrkn]

I remember reading an article back in the early eighties on the voyager missions but cannot remember which voyager had been position on coarse to reach I think it was Sirius with an ETA of 250,000 years
Does anyone remember reading or hearing of this as it was a while ago.
If this is possible ?????

[Mick]

Voyager 2 is heading in the general direction of Sirius.
http://tinyurl.com/j4urj
I have some old paper clippings of Pioneer Elevens encounter with Saturn, amazing achievements by these spacecraft and ground crew.
http://www.freewebs.com/estronomy/blastfromthepast.htm

[mickoking]

I was a primary school kid during the voyager encounters with Jupe and Saturn so it brings back great memories :)

[iceman]

Wow that's excellent.. Pretty good for the spacecraft to still be in good shape after all that time.

I wonder if the MER rovers will still be around in 27 years.. after they were only designed for 3 months :)

[Dennis]

Did you mean +16.72?

Cheers

Dennis

[middy]

No, -16.7 is correct as also stated by the Heavens Above site ....

http://www.heavens-above.com/solar-escape.asp

[Dennis]

Thanks Andrew, I realised my incorrect interpretation a micro second after I clicked the Post Quick Reply button, but hoped no one would notice. :whistle:

Cheers

Dennis

[mickoking]

I noticed :D

[astroron]

At nearly mag -17 thats still quite a few times brighter than any object in the night sky:eyepop:

[Glenn Dawes]

Hi Mickoking,
You are just like me. I love playing these games.
Some of you might be interested to know that as you continue out into space we finally lose sight of the Sun (based on mag 6) at a distance of 54 light years. Now that to me would be the definition of isolation as one loses our Sun from view.

Also, I have always been amused when I hear people say some thing like "spaceprobe X will arrive at star "whatever" in 60,000 years". I have no doubt that sometime in the future Mankind will go out and collect them all. What a great exhibit in a space museum, in the early days section!

Regards

Glenn