Space is our Final Frontier. NASA’s Voyager I and II missions were supposed to last just 5 years from 1972-1977 exploring the outer planets of our solar system and yet they are still powering over 30 years later, continuing to transmit data to Scientists on Earth as they pass through interstellar space, exploring and boldly going where no man has gone before.

NASA Voyager photo credit: NASA

In 1977, two unmanned spacecraft, designed and built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, were launched on reconnaissance missions to the outer planets. Separate Titan/Centaur rockets launched Voyagers 1 and 2 in September and August 1977 toward Jupiter.

The launch window during 1977-79 which the Voyager missions took advantage of to fly by all four planets in our outer solar system happens only once every 176 years. If this window had occurred in 1965-66-67, we wouldn’t have had the technology to fly such a mission. If it had happened in the 80’s, we couldn’t have launched the mission as necessary rockets had been discontinued.

Each Voyager spacecraft carries a message in the form of a 12-inch gold-plated phonograph record. The record, together with a cartridge and needle, is fastened to the side of the spacecraft in a gold-anodized aluminum case that also illustrates how the record is to be played. The records contain greetings in 55 languages, samples of music from different cultures and eras, natural sounds of surf, wind, thunder, birds, whales and other animals, and a message from then US President Jimmy Carter.

In September 1977, Voyager 1’s camera looked back toward the home planet for a first-ever glimpse of the Earth and its Moon in a single photo.

NASA Voyager view of earth and moon. photo credit: NASA

Voyager’s fuel efficiency is quite impressive. Even though most of the launch vehicle’s 700 ton weight is due to rocket fuel, Voyager 2’s great travel distance of 7.1 billion km from launch to Neptune resulted in a fuel economy of about 13,000 km per liter. As Voyager 2 streaked by Neptune and coasted out of the solar system, this economy got better and better!

NASA Voyager Saturn’s Rings. photo credit: NASA

The rings of Saturn appeared to the Voyagers as a dazzling necklace of 10,000 strands. Trillions of ice particles and car-sized bergs race along each of the million-kilometer-long tracks, with the traffic flow orchestrated by the combined gravitational tugs of Saturn, a retinue of moons and moonlets, and even nearby ring particles.

Through the ages, astronomers have argued without agreeing on where the solar system ends. One opinion is that the boundary is where the Sun’s gravity no longer dominates – a point beyond the planets and beyond the Oort Cloud.

This boundary is roughly about halfway to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri. Traveling at speeds of over 35,000 miles per hour, it will take the Voyagers nearly 40,000 years, and they will have traveled a distance of about two light years to reach this rather indistinct boundary.

Barring any serious spacecraft subsystem failures, the Voyagers may survive until the early twenty-first century (~ 2020), when diminishing power and hydrazine levels will prevent further operation. Were it not for these dwindling consumables and the possibility of losing lock on the faint Sun, tracking antennas on Earth could continue to “talk” with the Voyagers for another century or two!

To learn more about NASA’s Voyager missions and view images these missions took during flybys of Jupiter, Saturn etc visit the Voyager JPL website

Download a high resolution desktop wallpaper photo of “The Crab Nebula” as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope. The Crab Nebula is a supernova remnant, all that remains from the violent death of a star that may have been as much as 10 times more massive than our Sun.

In July/August of 1054, Chinese astronomers saw and recorded a powerful celestial explosion which brightened the summer sky. Appearing in the sky above the southern horn of the constellation Taurus was a star the Chinese described as six times brighter than Venus and about as brilliant as the full Moon.

The remains of this star were later christened the Crab Nebula, a cloudy, glowing mass of gas and dust about 7,000 light-years away from Earth.

The Crab Nebula is widely studied because it offers a unique opportunity to study high energy astrophysical phenomena. The physical processes that are at work in the centers of distant active galaxies and quasars are thought to be much like the processes at work in the center of the Crab, only on a vastly larger scale.

The difference is that while astronomers may never truly ’see’ into the very heart of an active galaxy, the Crab allows the properties and behavior of high energy winds and jets to be studied up close and personal

The glowing, eerie shifting patterns of light in the center of the Crab are created by electrons and positrons (anti-matter electrons) as they spiral around magnetic field lines and radiate away energy. This lights up the interior volume of the nebula, which is more than 10 light-years across.

The powerhouse at the center of the nebula responsible for this is a rapidly spinning neutron star – the compact core of the exploded star. Only about six miles (10 kilometers) across, the neutron star would fit inside a small town, yet its small size belies its significance and the punch that it packs.

In fact the Neutron star generates enough energy to make the entire nebula radiate over almost the whole electromagnetic spectrum and is so powerful that the nebula shines brighter than 75,000 suns.

When scientists look at a faraway celestial object, they are seeing it as it existed millions and millions of years ago, because it takes so long for light from the object to reach Earth.

“Variable star V838 Monocerotis”
credit: Hubble (NASA/ESA)

Astronomers can therefore “travel back in time” using equipment like the Hubble Space Telescope because light takes a long time to cross the vast interstellar distances in Space even though it zooms along at 299792.458 km/s

For example the rays of sunlight hitting earth this very second took 8 min 19.3 sec to travel from the Sun to Earth.

Similarly, Proxima Centauri is the closest star to our Sun and light from it takes 4.3 years to reach us on Earth.

So when Astronomers view Proxima Centauri through their telescopes they’re actually seeing it as it was 4.3 years in the past. If it imploded right now than we wouldn’t know until we looked at it 4.3 years from now.

Once telescopes became advanced enough to see outside our cluster of galaxies Astronomers could see see objects in space like galaxies as they were during the early age of Dinosaurs … a time that pre-dated our species.

Few things can let us see further out into the past than the Hubble space telescope operated by NASA and the ESA. Orbiting nearly 600km above us, Hubble is freed from the optical distorting effects of Earth’s atmosphere.

Sadly the lifespan of the revered Hubble telescope is nearing an end, however the good news is that a telescope arms race is taking shape around the world.

Astronomers are drawing up plans for the biggest, most powerful instruments ever constructed, capable of peering far deeper into the universe – and further back in time – than ever before.

“Ring Nebula NGC 6720″
credit: Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI/NASA/ESA)

The building boom, which is expected to play out over the next decade and cost billions of dollars, is being driven by technological advances that afford unprecedented clarity and magnification.

In fact, the super-sized telescopes will yield even finer pictures than the Hubble Space Telescope, which was put in orbit in 1990 and was long considered superior because its view was freed from the distorting effects of Earth’s atmosphere.

“We know almost nothing about the universe in its early stages,” said Carnegie Observatories director Wendy Freedman, who chairs the board that is building the Giant Magellan Telescope.

“The GMT is going to see in action the first stars, the first galaxies, the first supernovae, the first black holes to form.”

The new telescopes will be so powerful that they should be able to gaze back to a couple of hundred million years after the Big Bang, which scientists believe happened 13.7 billion years ago. That’s where all the action is
- source: CNN

Explore the Universe From Your Computer

• Celestia – a free space simulation that lets you explore our universe in three dimensions. Celestia runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. Unlike most planetarium software, Celestia doesn’t confine you to the surface of the Earth. You can travel throughout the solar system, to any of over 100,000 stars, or even beyond the galaxy.

  Over 10Gb of add-ons like textures, models or celestial objects are available at Celestia Motherlode

• Stellarium is an open source desktop planetarium for Linux/Unix, Windows and MacOSX. It renders the skies in real-time using OpenGL, which means the skies will look exactly like what you see with your eyes, binoculars, or a small telescope. Stellarium is very simple to use, which is one of its biggest advantages: it can easily be used by beginners.
• Microsoft World Wide Telescope – The WorldWide Telescope is a rich visualization environment that functions as a virtual telescope, bringing together imagery from the best ground- and space-based telescopes to enable seamless, guided explorations of the universe.

  WorldWide Telescope, created with Microsoft’s high-performance Visual Experience Engine, enables seamless panning and zooming across the night sky blending terabytes of images, data and stories from multiple sources over the Internet into a media-rich, immersive experience.

• Google Sky – Google Sky includes a number of different ways to explore the universe. The initial view shows the visible universe and is a mosaic of images from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the Digitized Sky Survey and the Hubble Space Telescope

Download a free 1024×768 resolution desktop wallpaper photo of the Full lunar eclipse on 28th August 2007 as viewed from south-western Sydney, Australia

Download Instructions

1. Click on the preview photo
2. When the full size photo is displayed from the Picasa web album – click on Download Photo in the right-hand side menu and Save

Full Lunar Eclipse on 28th August 2007

• Camera: Panasonic FZ30
• Wallpaper format: JPG 225 Kb in size
• Original Photo: TIFF 22.8 Mb in size

• F stop: 3.7
• Exposure time: 1 second
• ISO: 80

• Metering: Spot
• Focusing: Spot
• Focal Length: 420mm
• Original Resolution: 8 Megapixels (3264px x 2448px)
• Optical Image Stabilisation: Turned On
• Tripod Used: Yes

Every month I’ll publish a new 1024×768 resolution Free Desktop Wallpaper for your computer from the archives of photos I’ve taken, subscribe to my RSS feed to make sure you get the next one.

Other photos I’ve taken can be viewed at my Google Picasa Web Photo Album