Location of the termination shock: an attempt to reconcile recent Voyager observations with Ulysses/SWICS pickup ion data and other diagnostics

Details Location of the termination shock: an attempt to reconcile recent Voyager observations with Ulysses/SWICS pickup ion data and other diagnostics Location of the termination shock: an attempt to reconcile recent Voyager observations with Ulysses/SWICS pickup ion data and other diagnostics

Dec 2003

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2003agufmsh12c..03i&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2003, abstract #SH12C-03

Other

2124 Heliopause And Solar Wind Termination, 2144 Interstellar Gas, 2151 Neutral Particles, 2152 Pickup Ions, 2162 Solar Cycle Variations (7536)

Scientific paper

Our Solar System moves through a warm ( ˜6,500 K), partly ionized local interstellar cloud (LIC) with a relative speed of ˜26 km/s. The solar wind interacts with the LIC to form a cavity around the Sun called the heliosphere. The solar wind meets the interstellar charged component at the heliopause, where solar wind pressure balances the pressure of the LIC. Before reaching the heliopause, the supersonic solar wind is decelerated at an extended shock wave, the heliospheric termination shock (TS). Here we apply our new multi-component time-dependent model of the interaction of the solar wind with the local interstellar medium to predict the location of the TS. We put constraints on the model parameters by using (1) IMP 8, ACE, Wind and Ulysses observations of the solar wind velocity and numbers density at one to several AU, (2) SWICS/ Ulysses pickup ion data, (3) Ulysses and Wind measurement of interstellar helium, and (4) recent results on ionization of helium and hydrogen in the LIC (Wolff et al., 1999). These four sets of observational data allow us to determine that the TS location should be between 93-100 AU in 2003. Our model predicts the heliopause location at ˜ 160 AU, which is in agreement with analyses of the heliospheric radio emission events of 1983-1984 and 1992-1994 at the plasma cutoff frequency 2.2-2.8 kHz detected by Voyagers 1 and 2. However, recent measurements of the enhanced fluxes of energetic particles observed by the LECP and CRS instruments on Voyager 1 suggest that Voyager 1 at ˜ 85 AU was close or beyond the TS during 2002/07-2003/02. In this paper we will try to reconcile recent Voyager observations with other diagnostics of the heliospheric interface and discuss different scenarios. Wolff, B., D. Koester and R. Lallement, Evidence for an ionization gradient in the local interstellar medium: EUVE observations of white dwarfs, Astron. Astrophys. 346, 969-978, 1999.

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