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Voyager 1 Signals from Interstellar Space Detected by Amateur Astronomers on 1950s Telescope


"Voyager 1 is currently exploring interstellar space at a distance of 15.5 billion miles (24.9 billion kilometers) away from Earth," writes Gizmodo. And yet a team of amateur astronomers in the Netherlands was able to receive Voyager's signals on a 1950s telescope designed to detect weak, low-freq...

Scientific American shares an interesting perspective on the Voyager probes: we everyday Earthlings may simplistically think of the sun as a compact distant ball of light, in part because our plush atmosphere protects us from our star's worst hazards. The heliosphere grows and shrinks in response to changes in the sun's activity levels over the course of an 11-year cycle... [Jamie Rankin, a space physicist at Princeton University and deputy project scientist of the Voyager mission] notes, astronomers of all stripes are trapped within that chaotic background in ways that may or may not affect their data and interpretations. Within it are energetic atomic fragments called galactic cosmic rays, as well as dust expelled by dying stars across the universe's eons, among other ingredient.

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