Ulysses' rapid crossing of the polar coronal hole boundary

Details Ulysses' rapid crossing of the polar coronal hole boundary Ulysses' rapid crossing of the polar coronal hole boundary

Feb 1998

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1998jgr...103.1955m&link_type=abstract

Journal of Geophysical Research, vol. 103, p. 1955

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32

Ulysses Mission, Solar Wind, Coronal Holes, Plasma Interactions, Plasma Pressure, Plasma Composition, Solar Electrons, Plasma Density, Spacecraft Motion, Satellite Rotation, Ion Temperature

Scientific paper

The Ulysses spacecraft crossed from the slow dense solar wind characteristic of the solar streamer belt into the fast, less dense flow from the northern polar coronal hole over a very short interval (several days) in late March 1995. The spacecraft, which was at 1.35 AU and about 19 deg north heliographic latitude, moving northward in its orbit, remained in the fast solar wind from then through summer 1996. This boundary crossing is unique in that the combination of the spacecraft motion and rotation of the structure past the spacecraft caused Ulysses to move smoothly and completely from one regime into the other. In this study we examine this crossing in detail. The crossing is marked by a region of enhanced pressure, typical of stream interaction regions, which extends about 2 x 10 exp 7 km across. We find that the transition between the slow and fast regimes occurs on several temporal, and hence spatial, scales. On the shortest scale the stream interface is a tangential discontinuity where the proton and core electron densities and ion and electron pressures all drop while the magnetic pressure jumps to maintain a rough pressure balance. On larger scales the proton and alpha temperatures rise to their high-speed wind values.

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