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I didn't know Voyager 1 is still within the Oort Cloud, because I thought when people say 'interstellar space' they mean beyond the solar system. Things I learnt...

Robert McNees

2023-09-05 18:35:25


But Voyager 1 hasn't left the solar system. At 161 AU, its current distance from the Sun is a fraction of Sedna's 936 AU aphelion (though it is currently further out than the minor planet).

And it's nowhere near the inner edge of the Oort cloud, thousands of AU from the sun.

This chart shows Voyager 1's location in 2013, with distance from the sun plotted on a log scale. It is at roughly the same place today, since the next step on the scale jumps from 100 to 1000 AU.

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech

A color graphic produced by NASA which shows Voyager 1's distance from the Sun compared to other parts of the solar system and nearby stars. It is a log plot, so a wide range of distances are compressed onto a smaller scale. Each step on the horizontal axis corresponds to 10x the distance of the previous step. Voyager 1 is just outside 120 AU on this plot, in what is labeled "Interstellar Space," but it is still far from the inner edge of the Oort Cloud at around 1,000 AU.

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