I personally see this “Outside the solar system” claim as a rather subjective declaration.
To me, outside the solar system would be outside the most distant objects orbiting our sun. There are known objects considered to be part of our solar system that are further out than Voyager.
Have NASA get back to me in another 25,000 years or so.
Hahah...
I agree. I wished the article had explained what was meant by “outside the solar system”, unless I missed it in this barely English and frustrating blurb.
Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/32522/oort-cloud/#ixzz2esrOonKe
Let's do the math! an AU (astronomical unit is the distance from the Sun to the Earth or 93 million miles) So using the lessor AUs from above. 50,000 x 93,000,000 = 4,650,000,000,000 or 4.65 trillion miles so I'd say that there is a lot of stuff in our solar system that is further away from us then V'ger.
I am in agreement with you that a proper definition of our solar system would be the Sun and all the stuff that orbits it. But that is not the official def. The official def is based on solar "wind". Officially our solar system ends where solar wind is overpowered by interstellar wind and now we know that occurs about 15 billion miles out. Thank you V'ger.