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