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research article

Voyager 2 plasma observations of the heliopause and interstellar medium

Richardson, John D.
•
Belcher, John W.
•
Garcia-Galindo, Paula  
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November 1, 2019
Nature Astronomy

The solar wind blows outwards from the Sun and forms a bubble of solar material in the interstellar medium. The heliopause (HP) is the boundary that divides the hot tenuous solar wind plasma in the heliosheath from the colder, denser very local interstellar medium (VLISM). The Voyager 2 plasma experiment observed the HP crossing from the solar wind into the VLISM on 5 November 2018 at 119 au. Here we present the first measurements of plasma at and near the HP and in the VLISM. A plasma boundary region with a width of 1.5 au is observed before the HP. The plasma in the boundary region slows, heats up and is twice as dense as typical heliosheath plasma. A much thinner boundary layer begins about 0.06 au inside the HP where the radial speed decreases and the density and magnetic field increase. The HP transition occurs in less than one day. The VLISM is variable near the HP and hotter than expected. Voyager 2 observations show that the temperature is 30,000-50,000 K, whereas models and observations predicted a VLISM temperature of 15,000-30,000 K.

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Type
research article
DOI
10.1038/s41550-019-0929-2
Web of Science ID

WOS:000496474000017

Author(s)
Richardson, John D.
Belcher, John W.
Garcia-Galindo, Paula  
Burlaga, Leonard F.
Date Issued

2019-11-01

Publisher

NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP

Published in
Nature Astronomy
Volume

3

Issue

11

Start page

1019

End page

1023

Subjects

Astronomy & Astrophysics

•

Astronomy & Astrophysics

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solar-wind

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transition

•

region

•

flow

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
SB  
Available on Infoscience
November 27, 2019
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/163414
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