(and everyone else, you can come too),
I found a nifty NASA story on the some recent data from good ol' Voyager 1!
(let me cut a paste a little here...)
Our entire solar system—planets and all—sits inside a gargantuan bubble of gas about four times wider than the orbit of Neptune. The sun is responsible. It blows the bubble by means of the solar wind. Astronomers call the bubble itself "the heliosphere" and its outer membrane "the heliosheath."
Voyager 1 is about 10 billion miles from Earth, inside the heliosheath.
"You can simulate the heliosheath in your kitchen sink," says Stone. "Turn on the faucet so that a thin stream of water pours into the sink. Look down into the basin. Where the stream hits bottom, that's the sun. From there, water flows outward in a thin, perfectly radial sheet. That's the solar wind. As the water (or solar wind) expands, it gets thinner and thinner, and it can't push as hard. Abruptly, a sluggish, turbulent ring forms. That ring is the heliosheath."
neato bandito eh!??
And lastly, for this 'F-yeah It's Friday' post,
a lovely view of us... seen from Saturn by
Cassini-Huygens.
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