It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
The dynamic duo have spent the last five years exploring the outer layers of the heliosphere, according to NASA.
“The question is, how much further is it to the heliopause?” Stone asked during a lecture at the (JPL) headquarters in Pasadena, California. “We don’t know whether we’re dancing along the edge of a new region which is connected to the outside,” or if we are still billions of miles away.
Once Voyager does cross over, Stone said it will measure the strength and direction of the magnetic field that’s pressing against the outside of the heliosphere. And will also be able to take “quality measurements” of the cosmic rays, including the ionized rays that are unable to penetrate into our solar system.
Originally posted by Flyingclaydisk
Trust me, if our sun was gravitationally influenced by any other 'nearby' massive object we'd know about it!
Though our solar system does move (albeit very gradually) around the solar system, it is for the most part stationary relatively speaking. If our sun were in a binary orbit with another object it would have a significant impact on how we view the rest of the universe. The reason for this is the localized motion of our sun (while orbiting this other object) would radically change the relative position of the stars we observe from earth on a regular basis. It would also bend the light coming from other stars and change their relative position from our perspective.
Believe me, we'd know.
edit on 2/21/2013 by Flyingclaydisk because: syntax
Originally posted by DarknStormy
reply to post by eriktheawful
We can barely break the boundaries of our own Solar System yet we are certain that our Sun is orbiting the Black hole at the centre of the Galaxy? How the hell does that work?
We may not have an answer to the Nemesis question until mid-2013. WISE needs to scan the sky twice in order to generate the time-lapsed images astronomers use to detect objects in the outer solar system. The change in location of an object between the time of the first scan and the second tells astronomers about the object’s location and orbit. Then comes the long task of analyzing the data.
Originally posted by clairvoyantrose
reply to post by Kr0nZ
The milky way is a part of the system that is orbiting around the dwarf companion star.
Originally posted by ManFromEurope
Seriously, I KNOW that the engineers and scientists at NASA are very, very capable of their job. I just have to wonder if they were "aliens", trying to get some of them back in space
Originally posted by DarknStormy
reply to post by eriktheawful
We can barely break the boundaries of our own Solar System yet we are certain that our Sun is orbiting the Black hole at the centre of the Galaxy? How the hell does that work?
Originally posted by eriktheawful
reply to post by theabsolutetruth
Your news link is a few years old.
Both the Hydrogen Cooling and funding itself for WISE ran out back in Oct. 2010. WISE was continued for NEOs for a while.
The only way that WISE could perform another sky survey is if someone goes up and replaces that Hydrogen cooling.
WISE completed its all-sky survey in 2011, after surveying the entire sky twice at infrared wavelengths. The 16-inch (40-centimeter) telescope ran out of its coolant as expected in 2010, but went on to complete the second sky scan using two of its four infrared channels, which still functioned without coolant. At that time, the goal of the mission extension was to hunt for more near-Earth asteroids via a project called NEOWISE.
NASA has since funded the WISE team to combine all that data, allowing astronomers to study everything from nearby stars to distant galaxies. These next-generation all-sky images, part of a new project called "AllWISE," will be significantly more sensitive than those previously released, and will be publicly available in late 2013.
"I had pretty much written off using WISE to find distant galaxy clusters because we had to reduce the telescope diameter to only 16 inches [40 centimeters] to stay within our cost guidelines, so I am thrilled that we can find them after all," said Peter Eisenhardt, the WISE project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. and an author of the new paper. "The longer exposures from AllWISE open the door wide to see the most massive structures forming in the distant universe."
Other projects planned for the enhanced WISE data include the search for nearby, hidden cool stars, including those with masses as low as planets. If a large planet or tiny star does exist close to our solar system, an object some call "Tyche," then WISE's infrared data may reveal it.
Originally posted by DarknStormy
Originally posted by Flyingclaydisk
Trust me, if our sun was gravitationally influenced by any other 'nearby' massive object we'd know about it!
Though our solar system does move (albeit very gradually) around the solar system, it is for the most part stationary relatively speaking.
I don't understand what your saying.. Our solar system moves around the solar system?
Kaib, a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA) and the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Northwestern University and a National Fellow in the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics at the University of Toronto, conducted computer simulations of the process with Queen's University physics professor Martin Duncan and Sean N. Raymond, a researcher at the University of Bordeaux and the Centre national de la recherche scientifique in France. They added a a hypothetical wide binary companion to the Earth's solar system which eventually triggered at least one of four giant planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune) to be ejected in almost half of the simulations.
Other projects planned for the enhanced WISE data include the search for nearby, hidden cool stars, including those with masses as low as planets. If a large planet or tiny star does exist close to our solar system, an object some call "Tyche," then WISE's infrared data may reveal it.
Other projects planned for the enhanced WISE data include the search for nearby, hidden cool stars, including those with masses as low as planets. If a large planet or tiny star does exist close to our solar system, an object some call "Tyche," then WISE's infrared data may reveal it.
Originally posted by Andromerius
Excuse me, but doesn't our perspective of the stars change across millenia?
The sky was very different 20000 years ago...