Day 332 - a chilly Tuesday

 Today is the 3rd day of the 48th week, the 28th day of the 11th month, the 332nd day of 2023, and:

• Ascension of ‘Abdu'l-Bahá
• Bedfordshire Day - celebrating the birth of John Bunyan [no relation to Paul, just in case you were wondering]
• Giving Tuesday
• Hōonkō
• Independence day - Panama from Spain in 1821, Mauritania from France in 1960, and East Timor from Portugal in 1975
• It's Letter Writing Day
• Make Your Own Head Day
• National Alan Day
• National French Toast Day
• Red Planet Day - Mariner 4, the first successful mission to land on Mars, was launched from Cape Canaveral 59 years ago today 
• Turkey Leftover Day
• and  Voyager 1 is 22h 32m 11s of light travel time from Earth

Quote of the day:

"Our bodies fade at the hands of time

Like stars eclipsed in the dark

All alone in the night"

~  Sondra Lerche, 'Alone in the Night' on the 'Avatars of Love' album

Today I just want to share a guest blog post....

Voyager 2 posted on social media yesterday evening in answer to 'where are you going?': 

"The journey will effectively end (for you) when my power supply is so low that I can't operate any of my instruments. The EOM command will shut down communication with Earth. When? Within the next few years. I of course will continue, but will be non-functioning. Dead. Perhaps I will continue to tweet, but that depends on several factors. 

As to where am I headed... the real answer is "nowhere in particular" because my final trajectory was determined by the geometry of my encounter with Triton! The final goal was to send radio signals back to Earth through Triton's atmosphere, yielding data on its composition and density. To get that alignment right, I was sent skimming over Neptune's leading side and looping below the ecliptic plane to pass through Triton's radio shadow! That final loop around Neptune and Triton determined my final direction, deep towards the constellation Pavo (visible in the Southern hemisphere from Earth).

About 40,000 years from now, I will pass within 1.65 light-years of the star Ross 248, and be closer to it than to the Sun, but the reality is that 1.65 light-years is still an insurmountable distance. Every other star I will pass within the next _million_ years will be more than 2 light years from me. It is very likely that I will not _ever_ encounter anything. 

I will last longer than humans, longer than Earth, longer than the Sun. I will see the merger between the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies, and possibly be flung out of the combined supergalaxy into truly, truly, empty space. I will see the last of the stars extinguish, and the flashes of evaporating black holes. Eventually the matter that I was made of back on Earth will reach a time where it will simply fade away, along with the last of the longest wavelengths of light, stretched out by the expansion and cold death of the universe."

Rather awe-inspiring, isn't it?  Just the idea of contemplating the end of time and matter itself!   And then, I had to very disparate reactions.  The first was a flip observation that they don't build them like that anymore.  The second was a feeling of sorrow that this little emissary - along with its sister Voyager 1, who is on a different path but facing the same fate - was thrust into the deeps of space, there to die alone

Just something to think about as we gaze up into the sky or morel at the pictures beamed back to us.  Our planet is so small and we really should be taking better care of it and each other, neh?