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Something pretty (mind, body and soul bending) [1]
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Date: 2022-07-09
I ... I can see my house!
This is the last picture taken by Voyager 1 ... and then they turned the cameras off ... forever.
Voyager 1 was launched on Sept. 5, 1977 - this picture was taken on Feb. 14, 1990, about 3.7 billion miles from the Sun.
It took until May 1, 1990 (and four separate communications passes with NASA's Deep Space Network) for all the image data to finally arrive back on Earth.
At some distance from the Sun, the supersonic solar wind is held back from further expansion by the interstellar wind and large changes in plasma flow direction and magnetic field orientation occur. This is where the Sun's influence wanes.
On Aug. 25, 2012, Voyager 1 flew beyond the heliopause and entered interstellar space, making it the first human-made object to travel outside the Sun's neighborhood (and it has a 24 karat gold-plated phonograph LP with the music of Chuck Berry ... and some other stuff, too).
Voyager 1 has enough electrical power and thruster fuel to keep its current suite of science instruments on until at least 2025. By that time, Voyager 1 will be about 13.8 billion miles from the Sun.
In about 40,000 years, Voyager 1 will drift within 1.6 light-years (9.3 trillion miles) of AC+79 3888, a star in the constellation of Camelopardalis.
Oh, yeah ... that picture (Jeez, I can be such a duh!).
Before they took that last picture, they turned Voyager 1 around.
Can you see that tiny blue dot? The one almost halfway up the light band on the right side?
That's Earth.
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