PV Gap

Floyd Said:

Have there been any pictures taken from outside the solar system, outside the bubble?

We Answered:

Not yet and the most distant man made objects the Pioneer spacecraft are no longer functioning. The most distant functioning spacecraft is Voyager I at a distance of 114.498 AUs away from the sun. The termination shock of our solar system (the point where the solar winds start to slow down as they are buffeted by the pressure from the intersteller medium to the point where the solar winds fall to subsonic speeds) is 100 AUs approx so Voyager 1 is starting its journey through the "bubble". There is still a long way to go before Voyager 1 reaches the heliopause (where the velocity of the solar winds are roughly balanced out with the ambiant intersteller medium.

Now that being said the only pics of our solar system taken from Voyager 1 that I can find were from 1995 here they are.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap95081…

edit subsequently found this site:

http://www.astronet.ru/db/xware/search.h…

Ethel Said:

If our solar system is situated within the milkyway, how are we able to photograph the milkyway?

We Answered:

the milky way is a g'laxy which means thousands and thousand of stars....we are just one solar system of the many in one corner, thus we can photograph the rest of it. a better analogy is like sand in a bucket- we are one grain of sand- the milky way is represented by all the grains of sand- the bucket is gravity holding it togther.