by Michael Keller

NASA’s Voyager 1, which last week made headlines after scientists announced it had officially left our solar system, is now more than 11 billion miles from Earth. It has traveled farther than any other object humanity has ever produced.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t still spot it in the sky from Earth. Using a network of 10 radio telescopes called the Very Long Baseline Array, astronomers found and photographed the glow coming from Voyager’s main transmitter. The signal is beaming from the satellite at 22 watts, “which is comparable to a typical police car radio or – in visible light – a refrigerator light bulb,” says the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) team that tracked down the little probe that could.

Even though Voyager’s transmission broadcasts at such low power, they say, it is significantly stronger than any of the naturally occurring radio waves around it. Another instrument, called the Green Bank telescope, picked out Voyager from the background noise within one second.

( Artist’s impression of Voyager 1’s position when observed by the Very Long Baseline Array on February 21, 2013 Courtesy Alexandra Angelich, NRAO/AUI/NSF.)

“Voyager is the first man-made object to penetrate the interstellar medium, and we really want to be able to receive the data from this new frontier,” said NRAO scientist Toney Minter in a statement. “This information will provide many clues about how the interstellar medium behaves and how the Sun interacts with it.”

Astronomers took the picture this past February after Voyager 1 had already crossed into interstellar space.

Top Image: NRAO’s Very Long Baseline Array telescope catches a glimpse of the signal from Voyager 1’s transmitter as seen from more than 11 billion miles away. The slightly oblong shape of the image is a result of the VLBA antenna configuration. Courtesy NRAO/AUI/NSF.