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The Voyager Spacecraft

The Voyager Spacecraft

Website Images

The twin Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft continue exploring where nothing from Earth has flown before. In the 30th year after their 1977 launches, they each are much farther away from Earth and the Sun than Pluto is and approaching the boundary region -- the heliopause -- where the Sun's dominance of the environment ends and interstellar space begins. Voyager 1, more than three times as distant as Pluto, is farther from Earth than any other human-made object and speeding outward at more than 17 kilometers per second (38,000 miles per hour). Both spacecraft are still sending scientific information about their surroundings through the Deep Space Network (DSN).

The primary mission was the exploration of Jupiter and Saturn. After making a string of discoveries there -- such as active volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io and intricacies of Saturn's rings -- the mission was extended. Voyager 2 went on to explore Uranus and Neptune, and is still the only spacecraft to have visited those outer planets. The adventurers' current mission, the Voyager Interstellar Mission (VIM), will explore the outermost edge of the Sun's domain. And beyond.

This is the gold cover of the phonograph record placed on each of the voyagers. 

It has images that communicate (mathematically) where in space we are located 

and a little bit about the chemistry of our planet.

Here is a photo of the SOUNDS OF EARTH record next to its gold-plated cover.


Sounds of Earth

Music Pictures Languages All Sounds

NASA placed a … message aboard Voyager 1 and 2: a kind of time capsule, intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials. The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record-a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth.

The contents of the record were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan of Cornell University, et. al. Dr. Sagan and his associates assembled 115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind and thunder, birds, whales, and other animals. To this they added musical selections from different cultures and eras, and spoken greetings from Earth-people in fifty-five languages, and printed messages from President Carter and U.N. Secretary General Waldheim. Each record is encased in a protective aluminum jacket, together with a cartridge and a needle. Instructions, in symbolic language, explain the origin of the spacecraft and indicate how the record is to be played.

It contains the spoken greetings, beginning with Akkadian, which was spoken in Sumer about six thousand years ago, and ending with Wu, a modern Chinese dialect. Following the section on the sounds of Earth, there is an eclectic 90-minute selection of music, including both Eastern and Western classics and a variety of ethnic music.

Once the Voyager spacecraft leave the solar system (by 1990, both will be beyond the orbit of Pluto), they will find themselves in empty space. It will be forty thousand years before they make a close approach to any other planetary system. As Carl Sagan has noted, “The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced spacefaring civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet.”

The shoulders of giants...

"We are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants. We see more, and things that are more distant, than they did, not because our sight is superior or because we are taller than they, but because they raise us up, and by their great stature add to ours." John of Salisbury (Metalogicon)

Galileo Galilei

Why he was awesome:
He was Italian! Galileo was a ground breaking astronomer, physicist, mathematician, philosopher and inventor. Among his inventions were telescopes, a compass and a thermometer. Discovered the 4 largest moons of Jupiter:  Io, Callisto, Europa and Ganymede. He refuted the earth-centered model of the universe and spent the last years of his life under arrest in his home for going against the church. Galileo also refused to believe Kepler’s theory that the moon caused the tides, instead believing it was due to the nature of the Earth’s rotation (helping prove that even the smartest people can make mistakes). Read more about Galileo here.







Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727)

Why he was awesome:
He studied math & physics! Throughout his life Newton researched into a wide range of subjects including mathematics, optics, astronomy and alchemy. He had a notoriously bad temper & was very cranky, which makes me respect him!
The Theory of Gravity--he came up with it.  No, he did not invent gravity. One of Newton's most famous quotes was the paraphrase of the above quote: "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." After his death, English poet Alexander Pope wrote the following epitaph for Newton: Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night; God said "Let Newton be" and all was light. Read more about Newton here.








Carl Sagan (1934-1996)

Why he was awesome:
Astronomer, astrophysicist, writer, smart, funny, supernerd. I miss him every day. 
He brought science to the regular people like us with amazing TV program Cosmos in the extraordinary 1980's, which is when I grew up. He wrote over 600 papers and 20 books about science topics. He was a consultant and adviser to NASA since the 1950's, briefed the Apollo astronauts before their flights to the Moon, and was an experimenter / contributor to the Mariner, Viking, Voyager, and Galileoexpeditions to the planets. He helped solve the mysteries of the high temperatures of Venus (answer: massive greenhouse effect), the seasonal changes on Mars (answer: windblown dust), and the reddish haze of Titan (answer: complex organic molecules). His widow Ann Druyan continues his work in his footsteps and is a great public speaker. Read more about Carl Sagan here.








Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958-present)

Why he is awesome:
Astrophysicist extraordinaire  space travel enthusiast; well-spoken, writer, super hip and loves science. He has a great talent for presenting complex concepts in a clear and accessible manner. Runs the Hayden Planetarium at the Museum of Natural History where he got his first taste of star-gazing at age nine. This dude is on TV all the time. He's also remaking Cosmos with new material in the footsteps of Carl Sagan. Read more about Neil DeGrasse Tyson here.

Relative sizes in our solar system.

This helps to visualize how big planets are compared to one another & the sun.

is that your FINAL answer???

Giant Panda People

I find this story touching, yet hilarious.

From Time.com: Female giant pandas are notorious for not breeding easily, only ovulating once a year, in the Spring, and for only two to three days during this time. Other than that, they show little interest in mating. Part of the reserve's mission includes placing the pandas it has bred back into the wild. Because previous attempts to reintroduce captive pandas into the wild have been largely unsuccessful, the researchers have developed the novel technique of dressing as the animals to acclimate them to the wild.

See the rest of the story and photos here.

I'm just going to wait out the storm in my tiny house...

My friend built this awesome tree house for his kids.  It has a pulley to hoist stuff up to it (like Oreos and their Kindle).  I could so hunker down in this tiny house.

TINY HOUSE
TINY HOUSE
TINY SNOOOOOWWWW HOUUUUUSE!!!!

It is modeled after their real house, which you can see in the background here.

Ocean Facts!

Freaky frilled dude

This is a frilled shark. Frilled sharks are found throughout deep waters in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. It is sometimes described as a "living fossil" because it resembles extinct Paleozoic sharks.

Frilled sharks are rarely seen alive because they prefer deep water. A dying one was captured near the surface in Japan in 2007; see video of it here:

Science is full of patterns.

Views of other planets if they were as close as the moon is to us.

Venus--Mars--Jupiter

Saturn--Uranus--Neptune

Ew

Giant African land snails can get pretty huge. They're native to Africa and are routinely confiscated at airports as they are very popular as pets in the Western world. There is an invasive population of these snails spreading in Coral Gables, Florida.

Did you see the movie Madagascar? Well, the FOSSA is a real animal.

Pronounced "FOO-SA".  Here is a picture of it:

Cryptoprocta ferox

And here is a little bit about the Fossa, from It's Nature--Let's Discover!

Fossa is a very rare predatory mammal, found only on the island of Madagascar off the shore of Africa. These carnivores are closely related to Mongeese and in appearance they resemble a cross between a Puma and a dog, and their size of up to 6 feet (1.8 meters) make them the largest predatory mammal in Madagascar.

The Fossa inhabit forests and they’re equipped with sharp claws and a long tail to maneuver along the branches of trees, looking for prey. Typical for predators, their brown-ish fur blends with the surroundings. It’s the top predator on the island of Madagascar, hunting both day and night.

These agile creatures are solitary animals, bent on hunting everything that moves – from a mouse to a lemur. Their diet consists of any animal they can hunt, be it a reptile, a bird or a small monkey. Their agility is praised by many scientists who were keen on observing this animal, as it moves so swiftly through the trees, that it’s hard to follow it or even take a picture.

Read more: http://www.itsnature.org/endangered/critically/fossa-2/#ixzz0ytyOgmGw

I have the power!

Dear Mr. (or Ms.) Petersen,

Thank you for contacting BrainPOP!

In your message, you mentioned an error in our “Force” quiz. I checked it out, and you were correct!

I have changed question #4 so that it now reads “m/s/s” instead of “m/s.” The updated quiz should appear on the site as soon as our server updates itself. This usually occurs every few days, so the corrected quiz should appear online by the beginning of next week.

Thank you for bringing this error to our attention. If you have any further questions, comments, or concerns, please let us know.

Sincerely,
Brian Levinson
BrainPOP.com

This bird mimics human sounds such as cameras and chainsaws as part of its mating call!

Wow, Titan

Outstanding photo taken by the Cassini Saturn orbiter.

Inertia happens.

This is extremely important and informative!!!

At the edge!

VOYAGER 1 READY FOR A RIDE ON THE MAGNETIC HIGHWAY

Launched on Sept. 5th, 1977, Voyager 1 has travelled a vast distance from our solar system. Although it was launched 16 days after Voyager 2, its higher speed has taken it much farther. Now at a distance of over 11 billion miles(18 billion km) from the sun V1 has been through different regions of the Sun's "solar bubble" or heliosphere.

Inside the internal region of the heliosphere, charged particles ejected from the Sun travel at over 1 million km/h. This internal region has a radius of about 10 billion km or 6.2 billion miles. In December of 2004, V1 passed a point in the heliosphere called the termination shock where most of the charged solar wind particles became very turbulent. This region was the boundary for the heliosphere's outer layer called the "heliosheath" where the charged solar particles reach a stationary state. On July 28, 2012 The Voyager craft entered the outer boundaries of the solar bubble.

This outer boundary, dubbed by scientists the "magnetic highway" is a region where the lines of our Sun's magnetic field connect with interstellar magnetic lines. This connection makes it possible for the low-energy particles from our sun to leave the heliosphere and highly charged particles to create a pathway into the solar bubble. This means that the Voyager 1 spacecraft is now on its last leg of travel before it reaches interstellar space. Scientists hope that the direction of these magnetic lines will indicate when V1 transitions from stellar to interstellar space.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Source: NASA

Christmas gift ideas for Ms. P

Just in case you are going Christmas shopping for me this weekend, here are a few things at the top of my wish list:

Awww

This is a real Panda! China has this "Panda Diplomacy" and this one will be sent to Japan as an friendship envoy. For safety reason, he sits as a passenger with his feeder, not in a cage. Fastening the seat belt, wearing a diaper, eating bamboo. Source: Amazing Things In The World

vapor cone cray-cray

Beautiful Destruction

I need a new background for my fish tank widget over there on the right.

So far I have had a coral reef, a Great White shark, a piranha, a bowl of Alphabet Soup, and a snow globe.  Now it's a Nemo scene. Leave your suggestions for fish tank backgrounds here.

New comment format:  INITIALS and CLASS PERIOD ONLY!!!!

Wormhole alert!

Watch some vid about wormholes here.

I feel so connected ...

Ahhh... the elusive and lovely hippopoticorn:

Please, please get me this shirt as an end-of-year present (size 2x ... so I can sleep in it ... ya know...).  Oh, Mr. Sorensen would also like one.

Get ready for CMT time ...

Last March I had a little competition in which you posted your CMT Practice Test with triumph (on the fridge, on your bulletin board, etc.) to show us all how proud you were of your accomplishment. Well, I got some pretty great photos ... but this one by far takes the cake:

BEST CMT PHOTO
Grace, period 8

The Real Homer Hickam

From Homer's site: If you have only seen the movie October Sky, we hope you understand that it is not the complete story of Homer's Rocket Boys adventure and that some of it is not accurate. That's OK. It's still a cool movie! However, you will not be able to do your homework or write truthfully about Homer's boyhood if you have only seen the film. You must read the book. That's OK, too. It's a really cool book! We think you will like it even more than the movie.

OK, so how can you get more information on the book? Well, there were actually three books in what we call the "Coalwood Trilogy." Rocket Boys (also called October Sky to match the movie title), The Coalwood Way, and Sky of Stone. All are great books you will enjoy reading. Go to our Books page to find out more about them.

If you'd like to see photographs of the real Rocket Boys, then and now, and also learn more about the little town of Coalwood, West Virginia, where they grew up, go to our extensive Coalwood page.

Be sure to go to all of our other sections for more cool stuff including our Movies page which has a lot about the film, October Sky.

ARE YOU A STUDENT WHO WANTS TO KNOW MORE ABOUT HOMER AND HIS LIFE STORY?Click here to read his biography. Also, please visit our FAQ page for Homer's answers to many general questions about his life and times.

visit Homer Hickam's offical site here.

Floating Tiny Teepee!!!!

[excerpt from Tiny House Blog:] William Woodbridge is a 21 year old second year university student. He has a unique way of looking at life and how he lives as a student is quite different than the usual.

Williams lives in a teepee and a floating teepee at that. Will says “It’s deliciously hippyish.”

This story is from the Tiny House Blog. See the rest of the pictures and story there!

Blog Comment Format for Students:

Under every post, there is a green link that says either NO COMMENTS or (some #) COMMENTS.  Click this link to access the comment form.  Enter your comment in the comment box.  Click under the box where it says Name/URL, then enter your name as INITIALS and CLASS PERIOD ONLY.  For example, Alby Einstein in period 4 leaves his name as AE4.

Feed my obsession

Thank you, student (T.A.) for sending me pictures of tiny houses and feeding my obsession!!!  I invite the rest of you to do the same.  Who can send me the BEST tiny house of all time????

Go, Felix!

Red Bull Stratos: Mission Accomplished

Austria's Felix Baumgartner earned his place in the history books on Sunday after overcoming concerns with the power for his visor heater that impaired his vision and nearly jeopardized the mission. Baumgartner reached an estimated speed of 1,342.8 km/h (Mach 1.24) jumping from the stratosphere, which when certified will make him the first man to break the speed of sound in freefall and set several other records* while delivering valuable data for future space exploration.

ROSWELL, New Mexico - After flying to an altitude of 39,045 meters (128,100 feet) in a helium-filled balloon, Felix Baumgartner completed Sunday morning a record breaking jump for the ages from the edge of space, exactly 65 years after Chuck Yeager first broke the sound barrier flying in an experimental rocket-powered airplane. The 43-year-old Austrian skydiving expert also broke two other world records (highest freefall, highest manned balloon flight), leaving the one for the longest freefall to project mentor Col. Joe Kittinger.

Baumgartner landed safely with his parachute in the desert of New Mexico after jumping out of his space capsule at 39,045 meters and plunging back towards earth, hitting a maximum of speed of 1,342.8 km/h through the near vacuum of the stratosphere before being slowed by the atmosphere later during his 4:20 minute long freefall. Countless millions of people around the world watched his ascent and jump live on television broadcasts and live stream on the Internet. At one point during his freefall Baumgartner appeared to spin rapidly, but he quickly re-gained control and moments later opened his parachute as members of the ground crew cheered and viewers around the world heaved a sigh of relief.

"It was an incredible up and down today, just like it's been with the whole project," a relieved Baumgartner said. "First we got off with a beautiful launch and then we had a bit of drama with a power supply issue to my visor. The exit was perfect but then I started spinning slowly. I thought I'd just spin a few times and that would be that, but then I started to speed up. It was really brutal at times. I thought for a few seconds that I'd lose consciousness. I didn't feel a sonic boom because I was so busy just trying to stabilize myself. We'll have to wait and see if we really broke the sound barrier. It was really a lot harder than I thought it was going to be."

Baumgartner and his team spent five years training and preparing for the mission that is designed to improve our scientific understanding of how the body copes with the extreme conditions at the edge of space. Baumgartner had endured several weather-related delays before finally lifting off under bright blue skies and calm winds on Sunday morning. The Red Bull Stratos crew watching from Mission Control broke out into spontaneous applause when the balloon lifted off.

Image of the Day

Beautiful creatures like this Bioluminescent Comb Jelly lurk in the oceans' depths

The Magic of Seasons

Explanation: Sept 22 was an equinox, a date when day and night are equal. Today, and every day until the next equinox, the night will be longer than the day in Earth's northern hemisphere, and the day will be longer than the night in Earth's southern hemisphere. An equinox occurs midway between the two solstices, when the days and nights are the least equal. The picture is a composite of hourly images taken of the Sun above Bursa, Turkey on key days from solstice to equinox to solstice. The bottom Sun band was taken during the winter solstice in 2007 December, when the Sun could not rise very high in the sky nor stay above the horizon very long. This lack of Sun caused winter. The top Sun band was taken during the summer solstice in 2008 June, when the Sun rose highest in the sky and stayed above the horizon for more than 12 hours. This abundance of Sun caused summer. The middle band was taken during the Vernal Equinox in 2008 March, but it is the same sun band that Earthlings saw yesterday, the day of the Autumnal Equinox. 

No ... no..... no....

The Honey Games

This year we harvested our very first crop of honey from our backyard honeybees. We pulled 32 pounds of honey out of the hive!  Yesterday we pout it into jars.

This seems really helpful.

Poor T-Rex

We have a queen!!!

We have a Queen! After we lost our queen 4 weeks ago we left our bees alone to finish their emergency queen rearing. It sure was hard to leave them undisturbed for 4 weeks, but so very necessary. Today we peeked inside and immediately spotted eggs and larvae that are a few days old. Success! This means a queen has hatched, mated, and started laying. Hopefully this colony will develop the strength it had last year as we move into the fall. The split we created off this colony 4 weeks ago petered out to about 20 bees just flying around. All the honey on that hive is gone; they've probably been robbed dry. We recombined the remaining bees into the parent hive with a sheet of newspaper between them to ease their re-assimilation.

Flugtag 2012 on Channel 12

Bee activities ... May 2012

1908: The Tunguska Event

Above: Trees knocked down by the Tunguska explosion.

Credit: the Leonid Kulik Expedition.

June 30, 2008: The year is 1908, and it's just after seven in the morning. A man is sitting on the front porch of a trading post at Vanavara in Siberia. Little does he know, in a few moments, he will be hurled from his chair and the heat will be so intense he will feel as though his shirt is on fire.

That's how the Tunguska event felt 40 miles from ground zero.

Today, June 30, 2008, is the 100th anniversary of that ferocious impact near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in remote Siberia--and after 100 years, scientists are still talking about it.

"If you want to start a conversation with anyone in the asteroid business all you have to say is Tunguska," says Don Yeomans, manager of the Near-Earth Object Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "It is the only entry of a large meteoroid we have in the modern era with first-hand accounts."

While the impact occurred in '08, the first scientific expedition to the area would have to wait for 19 years. In 1921, Leonid Kulik, the chief curator for the meteorite collection of the St. Petersburg museum led an expedition to Tunguska. But the harsh conditions of the Siberian outback thwarted his team's attempt to reach the area of the blast. In 1927, a new expedition, again lead by Kulik, reached its goal.

"At first, the locals were reluctant to tell Kulik about the event," said Yeomans. "They believed the blast was a visitation by the god Ogdy, who had cursed the area by smashing trees and killing animals."

While testimonials may have at first been difficult to obtain, there was plenty of evidence lying around. Eight hundred square miles of remote forest had been ripped asunder. Eighty million trees were on their sides, lying in a radial pattern.

"Those trees acted as markers, pointing directly away from the blast's epicenter," said Yeomans. "Later, when the team arrived at ground zero, they found the trees there standing upright – but their limbs and bark had been stripped away. They looked like a forest of telephone poles."

Such debranching requires fast moving shock waves that break off a tree's branches before the branches can transfer the impact momentum to the tree's stem. Thirty seven years after the Tunguska blast, branchless trees would be found at the site of another massive explosion – Hiroshima, Japan.

Kulik's expeditions (he traveled to Tunguska on three separate occasions) did finally get some of the locals to talk. One was the man based at the Vanara trading post who witnessed the heat blast as he was launched from his chair. His account:

Suddenly in the north sky… the sky was split in two, and high above the forest the whole northern part of the sky appeared covered with fire… At that moment there was a bang in the sky and a mighty crash… The crash was followed by a noise like stones falling from the sky, or of guns firing. The earth trembled.

The massive explosion packed a wallop. The resulting seismic shockwave registered with sensitive barometers as far away as England. Dense clouds formed over the region at high altitudes which reflected sunlight from beyond the horizon. Night skies glowed, and reports came in that people who lived as far away as Asia could read newspapers outdoors as late as midnight. Locally, hundreds of reindeer, the livelihood of local herders, were killed, but there was no direct evidence that any person perished in the blast.

Luke ... I am your flipper ...

Yeah you did, Williams-Sonoma!

I am so excited about these Star Wars themed cookie cutters, sandwich cutters, cupcake loot, and especially the pancake molds with Darth Vader spatula.  Thanks, W-S, for using the force ... the force of awesomeness!

See the whole line here.

Comet Lovejoy -- as seen from space

Amazing Contest Opportunity!!!

Nobel Prize 2011: Neatly Summarized!

Lunar Eclipse in Timelapse

Live--Total Solar Eclipse in Mexico!

Total Solar Eclipse in China

Yet another planet/star size comparison:

Watch Here

The relative sizes of planets:

Click to View

Wow ... it's

SATURN!!!

As never before.

Rotation Around Polaris

This time-lapse image shows how the night

sky appears to revolve around Polaris as the

Earth spins on its axis.  Polaris (aka the North Star)

is positioned directly abopve the Earth's geographic north

pole, so is centedered on Earth's axis.  It appears

as a stationary dot in the center of the rotating star field.