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Wednesday, July 8, 2009

approaching jupiter

this excellent animation was created by adding images taken by one of the voyager space crafts, as it approached the planet jupiter in 1979!


notice how the gas from different horizontal layers moves in *different* directions creating amazing vortices in the atmosphere!! the 66 images used to create this animation were some of the first close-up shots humans collected of jupiter!

the voyager space crafts continue to travel away from the earth and beyond our solar system! as of may 2009, voyager 1 had traveled 16.4 billion kilometers (110 astronomical units) from the sun. 1 astronomical unit is the distance between the earth and the sun, so this little chunk of synthetic machinery is 110 times farther from the sun than we are, and it is escaping the solar system at a speed of about 3.6 astronomical units per year!

voyager 1 remains the most distant human-made object in space!

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