Voyager Turns 30

This fall is the 30th anniversary of the Voyager missions to the outer planets and beyond. The missions brought back the first close-up images of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune along with a plethora of new discoveries about the planets and their moons. Before these missions no one knew that there were volcanoes on any other celestial body other than Earth. Jupiter’s moon Io turned out to be THE place in the solar system for the ultimate in volcanism. From fire to ice, Neptune’s moon Triton, the coldest body in the solar system, was discovered to have geysers that spewed nitrogen gas and dust high into it’s atmosphere. I grew up in the Voyager age and can remember learning about the planets from the very pictures that the spacecraft sent back to Earth. We’ve learned so much since Voyager 1 and 2 passed through our outer Solar System, and we have such a better understanding of these planets and their moons because of these two missions. When Voyager 1 passed the orbits of Neptune and Pluto, NASA turned around the craft and took a picture of our tiny Earth, which looked like nothing more than a small blue speck against a black backdrop. NASA also took pictures of the rest of the planets and made a family portrait of our solar system family. Those spacecraft are still transmitting data, 30 years and about 9 billion miles later. Scientists think the craft are approaching the boundary of the heliopause, where the solar wind and interstellar wind meet. In about 80,000 years they will reach Alpha Centauri, our closest star at around 4 light years away. In billions of years when the Sun is nothing more than a cinder, these two spacecraft will still be on their journey through our galaxy, carrying with them a piece of humankind and human spirit.

Google Sky

If you haven't tried Google Earth yet, you should. It's a free download from Google that you can get here. You can zoom around the globe, search addresses, and add layers like Road Names, Parks and Recreation, Dining and Lodging. Very nifty. Even if you don't want to find a specific address, it's still fun to pan around the world and zoom in on terrain.
With the newest version 4.2 they have included Google Sky that does the same thing as Earth, but in the heavens. Since I'm the astronomy buff of the family I naturally had to give this a spin (no pun intended). To get to Google Sky, open Google Earth and click on the View menu. Choose "Switch to Sky." The layers for Sky include Constellations, Hubble Showcase, and Backyard Astronomer. You can do searches on the sky for constellation names, stars, nebula, and galaxies…really just about any sky object. You can also search using the Messier and NGC catalogs numbers. If you zoom in far enough to an object you will see a picture of it, and a pretty good one at that.
Granted I wouldn't use this for my primary sky charting software. I like Stellarium. much better and it's a freebie as well. However, this is a neat feature to add to Google Earth. Google has also put together Google Moon and Google Mars. You will have to browse to the website for these tools. It's a fun thing to play with if you want to take a trip to space without leaving the comforts of Earth.