Obecnie Voyagera 2 dzieli od Słońca ponad 113 AU , a Voyagera 1 ponad 137 AU.
HST bada środowisko międzygwiazdowe , przez które przemierzają sondy. Pomiar in situ i przez Kosmiczny Teleskop pozwala prowadzić analizę porównawczą. Gdy kiedyś sondy zamilkną to będziemy mieli rozeznanie co do warunków środowiskowych, w jakich będą się one znajdowały. HST zaobserwował istnienie bardzo zróżnicowanego środowiska w otoczeniu Voyagerów zawierającego chmury wodoru podlegające interakcjom z innymi elementami otoczenia.
Astronomowie mają nadzieję , że obserwacje Hubble'a pomogą scharakteryzować właściwości fizyczne lokalnego ośrodka międzygwiazdowego.
"This is a great opportunity to compare data from in situ measurements of the space environment by the Voyager spacecraft and telescopic measurements by Hubble," said study leader Seth Redfield of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. "The Voyagers are sampling tiny regions as they plow through space at roughly 38,000 miles per hour. But we have no idea if these small areas are typical or rare. The Hubble observations give us a broader view because the telescope is looking along a longer and wider path. So Hubble gives context to what each Voyager is passing through."The astronomers hope that the Hubble observations will help them characterize the physical properties of the local interstellar medium. "Ideally, synthesizing these insights with in situ measurements from Voyager would provide an unprecedented overview of the local interstellar environment," said Hubble team member Julia Zachary of Wesleyan University.For the next 10 years, the Voyagers will be making measurements of interstellar material, magnetic fields and cosmic rays along their trajectories. Hubble complements the Voyagers' observations by gazing at two sight lines along each spacecraft's path to map interstellar structure along their star-boundroutes. Each sight line stretched several light-years to nearby stars. Sampling the light from those stars, Hubble's Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph measures how interstellar material absorbs some of the starlight, leaving telltale spectral fingerprints.
Hubble found that Voyager 2 will move out of the interstellar cloud that surrounds the solar system in a couple thousand years. The astronomers, based on Hubble data, predict that the spacecraft will spend 90,000 years in a second cloud and pass into a third interstellar cloud.
An inventory of the clouds' composition reveals slight variations in the abundances of the chemical elements contained in the structures. "These variations could mean the clouds formed in different ways, or from different areas, and then came together," Redfield said.
In this illustration oriented along the ecliptic plane, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope looks along the paths of NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft as they journey through the solar system and into interstellar space. Hubble is gazing at two sight lines (the twin cone-shaped features) along each spacecraft's path. The telescope's goal is to help astronomers map interstellar structure along each spacecraft's star-bound route. Each sight line stretches several light-years to nearby stars. Credit: NASA, ESA, and Z. Levay (STScI)http://phys.org/news/2017-01-hubble-interstellar-road-voyagers-galactic.htmlhttps://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/hubble-provides-interstellar-road-map-for-voyagers-galactic-trek
Wątek: Misja Międzygwiezdna sond Voyager, czyli "Voyager Interstellar Mission" (VIM) (Przeczytany 162350 razy)