Heidelberg 2006 – scientific programme
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EP: Extraterrestrische Physik
EP 11: Heliosph
äre: Voyager im Heliosheath
EP 11.2: Fachvortrag
Wednesday, March 15, 2006, 12:00–12:15, B
The shock with the solar wind termination shock: Still ahead of VOYAGER-1 — •Hans Joerg Fahr1 and Sergei V. Chalov 2 — 1Institut fuer Astrophysik und Extraterrestrische Forschung der Universitaet Bonn, Auf dem Huegel 71, 53121 Bonn — 2Institute for Problems in Mechanics, Russian Academy of Sciences, 119526 Moscow (Russia)
The VOYAGER-1 prime investigators had recently declared that the NASA spacecraft VOYAGER-1 on December 16, 2004, at a solar distance of 94 AU has crossed over the solar wind termination shock and since that time is exploring the region of the heliosheath. Meanwhile, however, it became quite evident that intensities of anomalous cosmic ray particles (ACR*s) in the energy range larger than 0.5 MeV seen by VOYAGER-1 do unexpectedly continue to systematically increase with some smaller variations of a monthly period superimposed. Keeping to the conventional understanding of how and where ACR‘s are generated and accelerated, this intensity increase with increase of time and distance can only mean that the ACR generator, i.e. the termination shock, still is ahead of the VOYAGER spacecraft. With the help of classical ACR modulation theory we can give a conciliant and quantitative data interpretation deriving a shock location which is up to now always ahead of the spacecraft, however with variable differential distance. Depending on the absolute ACR intensities at the shock we can conclude that a shock passage of VOYAGER-1 will occur within the next quarter of a year.