The Hubble space telescope is illuminating what may lay ahead in front of NASA's twin Voyager probes. As the Voyager probes sail into stellar space and enter into a mysterious complex realm.
The Hubble space telescope reveals rich clouds of hydrogen along their path.
The work is an unprecedented glimpse of the realm between the stars. And is a rare marriage of two of the most famous space missions.
Julia Zachary said if the Voyager spacecraft are the Google Street View car going around your neighborhood taking pictures on the street, then Hubble is providing the overview, the road map for the Voyagers on their trip through interstellar space.
She is an undergraduate student at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. Together with her team, she reported their findings to the American Astronomical Society in Grapevine, Texas, January 6.
The mission of the two voyagers that was launched in 1977 was to visit Neptune, Uranus, Jupiter and Saturn.
Voyager 1 is 20 billion kilometers away from earth and entered the interstellar space in 2012. While Voyager 2 is more than 17 billion kilometers away and is still just barely within the Solar System.
Each Voyager is traveling at a different angle away from the plane of the Solar System, and Hubble peered into space along their lines of sight.
The Hubble space telescope gathered information on the LIGHT coming from distant stars, far beyond where the spacecraft currently lies.
Astronomers have used instruments like the Hubble space telescope to obtain indirect measurements of the material in interstellar space. But the Voyager probes are giving them a direct taste of this mysterious environment, sending back data on the electron density of their surroundings.
According to the Nature, Seth Redfield, an astronomer at Wesleyan and a member of the team said he was not used to having measurements from the place I'm observing.
According to the NASA, Redfield said that he is really intrigued by the interaction between stars and the interstellar environment. He added that these kinds of interactions are happening around most stars, and it is a dynamic process.
Hubble space telescopes helps astronomers and researchers to further study on the world beyond our solar system, this could lead them to more great discoveries in the future.
