Voyagers Legacy in Pictures

tanveer1979 writes "Space.com has an interesting photo feature from the voyager craft. For the uninformed voyager is the most distant man made object. For the first time we are recieving photos of distant parts of the solar system. Currently voyager is about 12 light hours away. Wonder how far is that? Well Sun is 8 light minutes away from Earth. In case you are wondering what is this all about, check out the current location of voyager. The voyager spacecraft are about to cross heliopause, which is the limit of the rule of the sun, after which inter steller winds take over, and for the first time scientists can get the feel of what lies outside the solar system."

Comments

Corrected link

[MagPulse]

http://www.space.com/php/multimedia/imagegallery/

It's not much, just 10 pictures. Click on "Voyager's Photo Legacy", then again for a Javascript pop-up gallery.

More links

[MagPulse]

Voyager is coming up lately because it just had its 25th anniversary launch date on August 20. Here are some more links:

• More, higher resolution pictures
• Detailed timeline
• A 2 minute NPR segment
• A longer segment at the end of Science News Roundup on NPR

And a few newspaper stories:

• Reuters
• BBC
• Washington Post

Re:Photoshop?

[Florian Weimer]

From the comment field in the GIF file (can you write such long comments into the GIF file using Photoshop?):

NASA's Voyager 2 took this photograph of Saturn on July 21, 1981,
when the spacecraft was 33.9 million kÿilometers (21 million
miles) from the planet. Two bright, presumably convective cloud
patterns are visible in the mid-northern hemisphere and several
dark spoke-like features can be seen in the broad B-ring (left of
planet). The moons Rhea and dioneÿ appear as blue dots to the
south and southeast of Saturn, respectively. Voyager 2 made its
closest approach to Saturn on Aug. 25, 1981. The Voyager project
is managed for NASA by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena,
Calif. This image was converted directly from digital data to
GIF format.

(Unfortunately, the Slashdot "filter" doesn't allow me to post the whole comment.)

Neptune is cool

[Tablizer]

In the mid 80's I remember walking by the newstand, and suddenly seeing a picture of a big, blue/green spooky looking planet on the front page. Then right next to it was "Voyager Reaches Neptune!".

I remember the space books before that simply showed grainy star-like blob photos of neptune (assuming no guessed illustration).

Then low and behold, this big spooky ball with wispy clouds and a jupiter-like dark spot is revealed, and its a real place, waaaaaay out there at the cold edge of the solar system.

It fit well the stereotype of a distant, strange, lonely, but beautiful planet.

Thumbs up, Voy!