The Solar Wind

Details The Solar Wind The Solar Wind

Sep 1960

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1960insp.symp.....h&link_type=abstract

Technical Report, International Space Symposium

Computer Science

Solar Wind, Solar Corona, Lunar Surface, Lunar Atmosphere, Stellar Occultation, Neutral Gases, Protons, Radio Stars, Hydrogen, Cold Gas, Argon

Scientific paper

Parker's model of a spherically expanding corona, the "solar wind," is scompared with D. E. Blackwell's observations of the 1954 minimum sequatorial corona. A significant discrepancy is found between the spredicted and the observed electron densities at distances from the sun sgreater than 20 solar radii. Blackwell's data are found to be consistent swith a model in which the corona expands mostly within a disk less than s25 solar radii thick, lying within the sun's equatorial plane. The sthickness of the disk as a function of distance from the sun is squalitatively explained in terms of magnetic pressure. The solar wind is sfound to have a considerable effect on the lunar atmosphere. First, the scalculated density of the lunar atmosphere is greatly reduced by scollisions with protons in the solar wind. If the flux of particles in sthis wind has the conventional values ranging between 1010 to s1011 per sq cm-sec, the calculations yield a lunar pressure sof 10-13 atmosphere of argon, in agreement with the value spredicted by Elsmore and Whitfield on the basis of observations on the soccultation of radio stars. Second, following a suggestion by Gold, it swas found that the collisions of solar-wind protons with the lunar ssurface produce an atmosphere of cold neutral hydrogen with a density of s105 per cu cm at the lunar surface. The density falls off at sgreater distances in accordance with the inverse-square law. Estimates sindicate that the interaction of solar particles with the neutral shydrogen will produce an extended lunar ionosphere with a density of the sorder of 400 protons/cu cm in the vicinity of the moon.

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