Path of Voyager relative to the galaxy?

September 9, 2018 9:52 AM

I'm clearly looking in the wrong places, because I seem to be oddly unable to find any information on the paths of Voyager 1 & 2 as they relate to the rest of the galaxy.

Paths through and out of the solar system are easily located, but I'm trying to find info on where they're going relative to the galactic core, spin direction, and the galactic plane.

For the purposes of this question, highly abstracted information is sufficient. A tidy diagram would be even better, but I'll take anything I can get.

posted by aramaic to Science & Nature (9 answers total)

Layman here. All I can offer is this: Both craft move along parallel to the Solar ecliptic plane, which is nearly 90 degrees offset from the galactic plane.

If memory serves, V1 is heading out toward Ophiuchus, which lies closer to the galactic core than Sol.
posted by Construction Concern at 10:17 AM on September 9, 2018 [1 favorite]

They are heading toward Gliese 445. That should be sufficient to convert to galactic coordinates.
posted by vacapinta at 10:46 AM on September 9, 2018

The last paragraph of the Voyager Interstellar Mission page on the NASA website states: The Voyagers have enough electrical power and thruster fuel to keep its current suite of science instruments on until at least 2020. By that time, Voyager 1 will be about 13.8 billion miles (22.1 billion kilometers) from the Sun and Voyager 2 will be 11.4 billion miles (18.4 billion kilometers) away. Eventually, the Voyagers will pass other stars. In about 40,000 years, Voyager 1 will drift within 1.6 light-years (9.3 trillion miles) of AC+79 3888, a star in the constellation of Camelopardalis which is heading toward the constellation Ophiuchus. In about 40,000 years, Voyager 2 will pass 1.7 light-years (9.7 trillion miles) from the star Ross 248 and in about 296,000 years, it will pass 4.3 light-years (25 trillion miles) from Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. The Voyagers are destined—perhaps eternally—to wander the Milky Way.
posted by Stoneshop at 12:04 PM on September 9, 2018 [3 favorites]

Best answer: The Galactic coordinates of LHS 2459 are given as 126.8472029434393 +37.9480654914235

This means that Voyager 1 is heading pretty much away from the Galactic center (180 would be directly away) and 37 degrees above it (0 would be directly toward the galactic center)
posted by vacapinta at 1:01 PM on September 9, 2018

Best answer: Sirius is given as 227.23028548 -08.89028243 so Voyager 2 is sort of at right angles and slightly below the galactic equator.
posted by vacapinta at 1:11 PM on September 9, 2018

I wish I could provided a better answer for the OP, but I'm not an astronomer and I don't work for FDF (the Flight Dynamics Facility). I guess what I would do is find ephemerides for VGR1 and VGR2 in ECI coordinates and then create a transformation matrix between Earth and the Galactic Center to get the Voyagers' XYZ positions and velocities relative to the Galactic Center to answer you question.

Once I failed in doing the matrix math I mention above I would either buy a beer for one of the scientists at work and ask them, or I would submit this question to Ask an Astronomer. I don't see your question asked at AAA, maybe ask this over there.
posted by Rob Rockets at 1:37 PM on September 9, 2018

Best answer: The "Spacecraft escaping the Solar System" page on Heavens Above is my go-to for the status of those spacecraft. It includes a small graphic showing which direction each of the five spacecraft are departing in. That graphic doesn't show which direction our sun is traveling in, but I can tell you that four of the five are heading upstream, and only Pioneer 10 is heading downstream, down the solar wind "tail".

The page is updated automatically with live status. I refer to it pretty often because I keep forgetting if New Horizons is going faster than the Voyager probes (it's not) and will eventually be out ahead of them (it won't). It's a common point of confusion because New Horizons was the fast object ever launched when it was hurled off of Earth, but then it slowed down more than the Voyagers did. The Voyagers got multiple planetary flyby boosts; NH only got one, from Jupiter.

A google image search for "solar wind tail voyager" should get you going in the right direction. Pun not intended.
posted by intermod at 2:42 PM on September 9, 2018

I have no answers, but you could always email any project managers listed on the Voyager site to see if they are responsive. A long time ago, I contacted the last manager of Pioneer 10 and he was very helpful, answering my amateur questions.
posted by Fukiyama at 6:31 PM on September 9, 2018 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thank you everyone, this has been enormously helpful! I've marked (what I think are) the most technically-accurate answers, but I appreciate everyone's responses.
posted by aramaic at 9:04 AM on September 12, 2018