The Local Interstellar Magnetic Field - 100 AU to 40 pc

Details The Local Interstellar Magnetic Field - 100 AU to 40 pc The Local Interstellar Magnetic Field - 100 AU to 40 pc

Jan 2012

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2012aas...21944417f&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #219, #444.17

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

We present two new diagnostics of the very local interstellar magnetic field (ISMF). The Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) has discovered a 'ribbon' of energetic neutral atoms (ENAs) in the sky. This ribbon forms a nearly complete arc in the sky and coincides with sightlines that are perpendicular to the ISMF draping over, and shaping, the heliosphere. Starlight that is weakly polarized in the nearby interstellar medium provides an alternate method for obtaining the local ISMF direction over tens of parsecs. We report new results that show that the ISMF directions traced by the IBEX ribbon and polarized starlight agree, to within the uncertainties. A new technique is used to derive the ISMF direction from polarization position angles. This technique searches for the ISMF that provides the best fit to the polarization position angles of an ensemble of nearby stars, where the stars are selected to avoid intrinsic polarizations. The polarization position angles of nearby stars towards the North Polar Spur indicate that the Loop I ISMF extends to within 8 pc of the Sun. Comparisons between the ISMF derived from the IBEX ribbon, the ISMF of Loop I, and the ISMF traced by nearby pulsars in the third galactic quadrant, suggest that the "local" ISMF has the nature of an interarm field with coherent directions over relatively large scales of several hundred parsecs. The best-fitting ISMF direction from the polarization measurements supports the view that the Sun is embedded in a fragment, or filament, of a superbubble shell originating in the Sco-Cen Association, with the ISMF approximately parallel to the filament elongation.

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