Voyager @ 35

Today marks 35 years since Voyager 2 lifted off, embarking on the trip through the solar system on which it’s still undertaking.

Just for fun, because I’ve got a decent model of it and happen to love space imagery, I thought I’d recreate glimpses of Voyager 2 on the various stops along its journey, as seen through the eyes of some external observer nearby. You can click on them for a somewhat larger render.

Jupiter – 1979

Saturn – 1981

Uranus – 1986

Neptune – 1989

Rovers and atmospheric probes are cool, but deep down… Voyager 2 is still my favorite real-life robot of all time. My childhood was spent waiting for either the next Star Wars or Star Trek movie, or the next Voyager flyby. I stayed up for almost an entire day nonstop to watch PBS’ live feed of pixellated B&W raw images from Neptune in 1989. That’s the reason I still follow every rover, every orbiter, everything we put up there that can take a picture: it makes me feel like a wide-eyed kid again.

Implements of destruction used for these images were Celestia, 3D Studio Max and Paint Shop Pro. And as cool as these pictures are… we wouldn’t know what any of this stuff looks like if the Voyager spacecraft hadn’t gone to have a look for us.

The size of the sun in the Saturn and Neptune images is way off – in both cases, it should be much smaller; I employed a bit of artistic license. (You’ll also have to forgive my 2001 homage at Neptune.) Similarly, light levels are unrealistically high in all of the above images; the photos you’ve seen of Uranus and Neptune in particular are the results of jaw-droppingly long exposures from a fast-moving electronic eye. It’s amazing that we could see them at all.

Voyager 2 is currently running up on 15 billion kilometers from Earth – or 100 times as far from the sun as the Earth’s orbit is. At that distance, light from the sun takes over a day to reach Voyager 2.

Long may her voyage continue.