It's Full of Stars

in 1977, NASA launched their Voyager mission.  The main objective of the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 space probes was to study Jupiter and Saturn.  After each fulfilled their objectives, they kept going, out into the far reaches of our solar system.  Voyage 1 is now traversing through the very outside of our solar system, in a pocket of highly condensed magnetic waves in a region of space where not much exists.  Currently, Voyager 1 operates at about -110 degrees Fahrenheit, being out of reach of the warmth of our suns rays.  This purgatory is the buffer between our solar system and interstellar space, and in the next few months or years, the Voyager 1 craft is expect to reach interstellar space.  On February 17, 1998, Voyager 1 passed the Pioneer 10 probe to become the most distant human-made object in space.  It will remain the most well-traveled and farthest man made object from earth (with Voyager 2 trailing behind it). 

Considering all that, Voyager 1 is traveling at about 11 miles PER SECOND, and has traveled about 11 BILLION miles from earth since 1977.

Now.

CONSIDERING ALL OF THAT.  It takes 8 minutes for the suns light to reach earth, so when you look at the sun, that’s what the sun looked like 8 minutes ago.  If you’re staring at a star which is 13 light-years away, that’s what THAT star looked like 13 years ago.  The speed of light is about 186,287 miles PER SECOND.  It will only take light 16.5 hours to traverse the same length that Voyager 1 has taken 35 years to pass.  1 single light-year is equivalent to 5,878,625,373,183.6 miles (6 trillion miles).  In comparison, Voyager 1 has traveled only 0.00187 light-years (11 billion miles).  

NOW CONSIDERING ALL OF THAT STUFF.

It takes light about 100,000 years to travel from one end of the Milky Way Galaxy to another.

Our solar system is about 23,000 light-years from the edge of the galaxy.

At 11 miles per second (39,600mph) it will take more than 389.5 million years for Voyager 1 to finally escape our galaxy.

The Voyager missions changed the way we look at ourselves, and has given us some of the most breathtaking images of human history.  It sent us the first pictures

This is a picture Voyager 1 sent back to earth when it was only 4 billion miles away.

“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”

Carl Sagan

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/voyager/index.html

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