Sunday, July 21, 2013

Wondering about the Voyagers.

No, this post is not about any of my RV trips, but rather about the two Voyager space crafts, which are the first to "go where none has gone before".  They were launched back in the summer of 1977 and was designed to last five years.  They have out lived the planned life and are still going strong sending back new and exciting discoveries.  This first picture depicts its flyby of Saturn.


Forgive the quality of the pictures but the only ones I could find were just thumb nails and I had to enlarge them a lot just to get to this size.  This next picture shows what one of the space craft looks like.  (You can't call them satellites because they don't orbit anything.")
 

In this last picture, it shows the two spacecraft at the edge of our helio system and about to enter the "bow shock" area where the interstellar winds equal the solar winds.  A boundary that no craft from Earth has ever passed before.


Sorry about the quality of the pictures and the fact that it is hard to make out the nomenclature.

Now for the top ten things that they discovered and/or studied in more depth and clarity than ever before.

1.  Volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io.

2.  Jupiter's turbulent atmosphere.

3.  An ocean within Europa?

4.  The Io torus.

5.  Saturns' ring structure.

6.  Titan's atmosphere.

7.  Neptune's Great Dark Spot.

8.  Neptune's supersonic winds.

9.  Geysers on Triton.

and 10.  The edge of the solar system.

Most of this information seems old to us now, but remember these crafts were launched back in 1977 and did make wondrous new discoveries.  If any of you would like any additional information about any of the above, you can ask me and I will tell you, if I know the answer.  And if any of you are planning that long of a trip, I hope you have a really, really big suitcase!!  So, better stay on Earth and have a very nice day, you hear?

11 comments:

  1. Do they know where the two spacecraft are going? I wonder who is going to be watching the I Love Lucy reruns on board?

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  2. Our space program seem more ambitious back then.

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  3. I remember how excited we were to go out in our backyard in 1957 and see Sputnik in the night sky. Look how far science has come since then... a "mere" 56 years!

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  4. Jimkabob, not sure that they were planned for anything past Jupiter. They did reprogram it to fly by Uranus. Wow, it has been out there a long time, hasn't it?

    Sixbears, It sure was. But the country was in a better financial state back then.

    The Odd Essay, I remember that also along with the next one, mutnick. The one with the dog in it. Russia was the one that got us into the space race.

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  5. I remember that too, and the first moon walk. How fascinated we all were.

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  6. Yep remember it all like it was a hunert years ago. Amazed that the Voyagers are still going and doing good. I also remember when we were listening to Sputnik beeping over the radio and TV and wondering what it all meant for the US.

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  7. Trouble, The sputnick wasn't on TV, but the moon wald sure was. Remember that well. My Dad and Mom were visiting us at that time.

    David, It seems like a hundred years, doesn't it? The kids today think nothing of it, but back in the day, it was real special.

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  8. great post! I'm not up on our space adventures but now I know a little something.

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  9. Jill, Glad you learned something. I love astronomy and have several telescopes. But I get most of my info from "Astronomy" the magazine.

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  10. I had to check the date on Google. The launch date was the summer of 1977 as you say in your last paragraph not 1997 as you typed in your first paragraph.

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    1. Ed, thanks for finding that typo. I will fix it. I am so bad a speller a not that great of a typist, so I need a whole bunch of proof readers.

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