17,930,435,000 km from home

[Jan Kyster]

http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/where/index.html

She was in the news today, and thanks to the above link! - was able to time her...

Anyway, found the stopwatch and started it as the odometer crossed the 17930695000 km number.

At the 3 minute mark, this print screen of the odometer reading was taken:




Which gives the following numbers:

 
start clock              17930695002 km
end clock 3 minutes      17930698270 km
travelled distance              3268 km = 65360 km/t = 35291 kts.

You go, girl!

Been travelling now for thirty-four years.
And still going strong. Recently phoned home: "Detecting a [particular kind of] hydrogen signal with a Lyman-alpha emission from the Milky Way."


Isn't that just heart-stopping, breaking news?

Read news story here: http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/...134918938.html

http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/index.html



One of the finest ships ever! Fair wind, Voyager!

Oh! Now she passed 17930755000 km. With this pace, she'll be 20 billion kilometers from home in 3 and a half year from now...

[Platapus]

That is awesomely cool.

Useless trivia: Voyager 1 and Pioneer 10 are the two most separated man made objects in the Universe

It is going to take Voyager 40,000 years to get close to the nearest star.

Space is kinda big.

[soopaman2]

What always had me in awe about the size of space is that the little red star in the constellation Orion (Betelgeuse) would take you 640 years to reach at 186,282 miles per second.

If it sat where our sun is (sol) it would reach beyond the asteroid belt.

And that is just our universe. There are alot others. The size is beyond human comprehension within our own solar system, much less other universes.

Also when you look up at a star, you are seeing it as it was years ago. For instance if you see a supernova from 300 light years away, you are looking at something that happened 300 years ago. For all we know the north star could have burned out 200 years ago.

Astronomy has always amazed me.

Awesome site, I actually bookmarked it.

[Gerald]

Well, to our sun it takes "only 8 light minutes"....

[joegrundman]

Originally Posted by Platapus

That is awesomely cool.

Useless trivia: Voyager 1 and Pioneer 10 are the two most separated man made objects in the Universe

It is going to take Voyager 40,000 years to get close to the nearest star.

Space is kinda big.

it'll never reach another star. in about 150 years some guy is going to scoop it up in his Cobra MkIII and bring it back to Mars and flog it on ebay.

[Skybird]

Space. Subatomic particles. All emptiness, no solid substance anywhere. All what we perceive - a dance of reflections only: that's what we call "mind".

The greatest mystery: that something exists. Why does exist simply nothing? Why is there something at all? Single Big Bang - what was before, why did it happen, and where? Fluctuating universe - unlimited ammounts big bangs, since eons and eons - why?

We sit and think, heads in our hands, wondering. Who is the thinker? Where does he sit? What's it that he sees? Emptiness staring into emptiness, seeing all. We may send out probes and spaceships, we may go deeper and deeper into the subatomic world - could it be that we are the answer?

A dream within a dream, dreaming of that dream.

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by joegrundman

it'll never reach another star. in about 150 years some guy is going to scoop it up in his Cobra MkIII and bring it back to Mars and flog it on ebay.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Vendor

Well, to our sun it takes "only 8 light minutes"....

No, it takes just 8 minutes.

"Light minutes", light years, is a distance unit, not a time unit.

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by Vendor

Well, to our sun it takes "only 8 light minutes"....

Once back when I was in the military we were sitting around playing trivial pursuit.

The question, one of my friends had was "how long does it take light to travel from the sun to the earth"

He answer, with complete seriousness, was "all night"

Since alcohol was involved, and the answer made sense, we gave it to him.

We figured it was one of those quantum mechanics things.

[Gerald]

Originally Posted by Skybird

No, it takes just 8 minutes.

"Light minutes", light years, is a distance unit, not a time unit.

i know...but you express yourself, in a way that a teacher would have done, Since it takes about 8 minutes for the light from the Sun to reach us, then when we point at where we see the Sun, we are actually pointing to where it was 8 minutes ago. The average distance between the earth and the sun is approximately 150,000,000 kilometers. So lets do the math: (150,000,000km)/(300,000km/s) = (500s)/(60s/m) = 8.3 minutes
Keep in mind the distance between the earth and the sun is not constant, the orbit is elliptical so sometimes its longer and sometimes its shorter.Light given off by the Sun has traveled about 300,000 km. Even so, this light has not reached Earth yet. The distance from the Sun to Earth is about "8 light-minutes". Light-minutes sounds more like a time measurement instead of distance, but it means the distance that light travels in a period of 8 minutes. At a speed of 300,000 km/sec, light would travel about 149 million kilometers in 8 minutes.

[Gerald]

Originally Posted by Platapus

Once back when I was in the military we were sitting around playing trivial pursuit.

The question, one of my friends had was "how long does it take light to travel from the sun to the earth"

He answer, with complete seriousness, was "all night"

Since alcohol was involved, and the answer made sense, we gave it to him.

We figured it was one of those quantum mechanics things.

Well,Alcohol theory it is yours, to keep for yourself

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by joegrundman

it'll never reach another star. in about 150 years some guy is going to scoop it up in his Cobra MkIII and bring it back to Mars and flog it on ebay.

LOL

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Vendor

i know...but you express yourself, in a way that a teacher would have done, Since it takes about 8 minutes for the light from the Sun to reach us, then when we point at where we see the Sun, we are actually pointing to where it was 8 minutes ago.

So the sun revolves around the Earth now?

Since I assume you do not refer to the galactic parallax movement, or even just the movement of solar system inside this one galaxy, but refer to the relative position changes of Earth compared to the sun, it might be more precise to point out that the Earth has moved so and so far in its orbit around the Sun in those 8 minutes (speed the slower the more distant from the sun it currently is), and that we do see the sun in the state it was in 8 minutes ago. Eyes are a time machine, the more distant an object is that we look at, the longer backwards in time we watch. In principle, we never see with our eyes the real, immediate "present".

I can be a smartass, I know.

The average distance between the earth and the sun is approximately 150,000,000 kilometers. So lets do the math: (150,000,000km)/(300,000km/s) = (500s)/(60s/m) = 8.3 minutes
Keep in mind the distance between the earth and the sun is not constant, the orbit is elliptical so sometimes its longer and sometimes its shorter.Light given off by the Sun has traveled about 300,000 km. Even so, this light has not reached Earth yet. The distance from the Sun to Earth is about "8 light-minutes". Light-minutes sounds more like a time measurement instead of distance, but it means the distance that light travels in a period of 8 minutes. At a speed of 300,000 km/sec, light would travel about 149 million kilometers in 8 minutes.

Which is a statement about distance, as I said, and still not about time taken.

[Gerald]

Originally Posted by Skybird

So the sun revolves around the Earth now?

Since I assume you do not refer to the galactic parallax movement, or even just the movement of solar system inside this one galaxy, but refer to the relative position changes of Earth compared to the sun, it might be more precise to point out that the Earth has moved so and so far in its orbit around the Sun in those 8 minutes (speed the slower the more distant from the sun it currently is), and that we do see the sun in the state it was in 8 minutes ago. Eyes are a time machine, the more distant an object is that we look at, the longer backwards in time we watch. In principle, we never see with our eyes the real, immediate "present".

I can be a smartass, I know.



Which is a statement about distance, as I said, and still not about time taken.

I hope ya have plenty of time, this could take some time........I be back

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Vendor

I hope ya have plenty of time, this could take some time........I be back

No need to spend time on it, Vendor! Believe me - lightyears (ly) or lightdays or lightseconds are used as a distance unit in any astronomical science book you could think of. It is established nomenclatura. No need to debate anything there!