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The animations below trace the orbits of the Sun (in yellow), one of
the spacecraft ("s/c", in blue) and some close encountering stars (in
red) forward in time. The coordinate system is Cartesian with the
Galactic centre at (0,0,0) and is inertial with respect to that. Left
is the view from the north Galactic pole (the z-axis is perpendicular
to the Galactic plane); right is the view from l=90 (the direction of
Galactic rotation). The Sun and spacecraft are at (x,y,z) = (8000,0,10) at t=0.
Note that the scales on the axes are different,
so total speeds for objects cannot easily be compared.
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Above: Voyager 1 flybys with (in order) Proxima Centauri (16kyr), Gl 445 (44kyr), TYC 3135-52-1 (303kyr; the closest encounter), and HD 28343 (488kyr). These are four of the five stars listed in
Table 1 in the paper. Gaia DR2 2091429484365218432 is excluded
because its flyby is much later, but this is included in the panel below (which covers a longer timespan).
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Above: Pioneer 10 flybys with (in order) Ross 248 (33.8kyr), Proxima Centauri (34.1kyr), and
HIP 117795 (90kyr, the closest encounter). These are three of the four stars listed in
Table 1 in the paper.
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