Bonn 2010 – scientific programme

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EP: Fachverband Extraterrestrische Physik

EP 4: Heliosphere I

EP 4.1: Invited Talk

Tuesday, March 16, 2010, 08:30–09:00, AKM

Observations of the Global Interaction between the Heliosphere and its Galactic Environment: Results from the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) — •Horst Fichtner¹ and Hans Fahr² — ¹Institut für Theoretische Physik IV, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, 44780 Bochum — ²Argelander Institut für Astronomie, Universität Bonn, Auf dem Hügel 71, 53121 Bonn

The Sun moves through the local interstellar medium, continuously emitting ionized, supersonic solar wind plasma and carving out a cavity in interstellar space, called the heliosphere. The recently launched Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft has completed its first all-sky maps of the interstellar interaction at the edge of the heliosphere by imaging energetic neutral atoms (ENAs) emanating from this region. A bright ribbon of ENA emission has been found that was unpredicted by prior models or theories. This ribbon is superposed on globally distributed flux variations ordered by both the solar wind structure and the direction of motion through the interstellar medium. The results indicate that the external galactic environment may have strong imprints on the outer heliosphere.