Azernews.Az

By Nazrin Gadimova

NASA's Voyager 1 has left the heliosphere, the magnetic boundary separating the solar system's sun, planets and solar wind from the rest of the galaxy, carrying a disc that contains a piece of Azerbaijani music, as well as works by renowned composers such as Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and Stravinsky.

A gold-plated audio and video disc includes information about the location of Earth in the solar system, as well as music, images and sounds from our planet. The disc has a diameter of 12 inches (about 30 centimeters) and is covered by gold to protect against erosion by cosmic dust.

Nearly 80 per cent of the records is music by many cultures of the world, including Azeri music for balaban, a cylindrical-bore, double-reed wind instrument about 35 cm long. It was recorded by Radio Moscow.

The records also include pieces of classical music by Indian, Japanese and Chinese composers, as well as folk music from Peru, Bulgaria, Australia, Africa and Georgian choral songs. The remaining 20 percent consist of human voices, sounds of Earth and 116 images.

The human voices include greetings by a UN secretary-general in 55 languages.

The twin spacecraft Voyager 1 and 2 were launched in 1977, 16 days apart. As of Thursday, according to NASA's real-time odometer, Voyager 1 is 18.8 billion kilometers (11.7 billion miles) from Earth. Its sibling, Voyager 2, is 15.3 billion (9.5 billion) kilometers from our planet.

Voyager 1 is being hailed as the first probe to leave the solar system.