Where is Voyager 1 heading? Is it going to the LMC?

Paula2012-09-18T04:28:04Z

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It is not heading in that direction.
And it is not moving very fast.
It takes about 20,000 years for Voyager to travel 1 light year.

It is in independent orbit in the Milky Way galaxy. It can never escape into inter-galactic space.

Even if it did, LMC is about 200,000 light years away.
It would take Voyager
200,000*20,000 years
= 4,000,000,000 years to go that far!

Quite a long time.

Zardoz2012-09-18T04:38:03Z

Voyager 1 is heading toward Camelopardalis, which is high in the northern sky, while the LMC is spread over the constellations Dorado and Mensa equally high in the southern sky.

Add to that, Voyager is only leaving the Solar System, not the Milky Way. In that regard your question is akin to asking a person leaving the living room to go into the kitchen if they're going to Pluto.

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Silent2012-09-18T04:31:11Z

It is traveling out into interstellar space. It is not heading toward anything in particular.

It certainly is not going to the Large Magellanic Cloud. That galaxy is 160,000 light-years away. It would take Voyager 1 over 2.8 billion years to reach it at its current speed — if it were pointed in that direction, which it is not.

Anonymous2012-09-18T04:39:53Z

Voyager 1 is heading in the direction of the constellation Ophiuchus.

I am not familiar with the constellation Ophiuchus. If the LMC is centered in Ophiuchus then you have your answer. If it is not, then the answer is no.

?2012-09-18T04:12:51Z

no specific destination. Just out of the solar system. It does not have any target. Also, it would take it millions of years to reach the large magellic cloud.