New data from NASA's Cassini mission, combined with measurements from the two Voyager spacecraft and NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, suggests that our sun and planets are surrounded by a giant, rounded system ...
Space Exploration
Apr 24, 2017
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University of Iowa space physicist Don Gurnett says there is solid evidence that NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has become the first manmade object to reach interstellar space, more than 11 billion miles distant and 36 years ...
Space Exploration
Sep 12, 2013
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Scientists, including University of New Hampshire astrophysicists involved in NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission, have discovered that the particles streaming into the solar system from interstellar space ...
Space Exploration
Sep 5, 2013
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(Phys.org)—NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has entered a new region at the far reaches of our solar system that scientists feel is the final area the spacecraft has to cross before reaching interstellar space.
Space Exploration
Dec 3, 2012
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(Phys.org) -- Data from NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft indicate that the venerable deep-space explorer has encountered a region in space where the intensity of charged particles from beyond our solar system has markedly increased. ...
Space Exploration
Jun 15, 2012
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For the last few decades, space scientists have generally accepted that the bubble of gas and magnetic fields generated by the sun – known as the heliosphere – moves through space, creating three distinct boundary ...
Space Exploration
May 10, 2012
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Using data from NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft, an international team of researchers has measured neutral "alien" particles entering our solar system from interstellar space. A suite ...
Space Exploration
Jan 31, 2012
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(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has entered a new region between our solar system and interstellar space. Data obtained from Voyager over the last year reveal this new region to be a kind of cosmic purgatory. ...
Space Exploration
Dec 5, 2011
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(PhysOrg.com) -- The 33-year odyssey of NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has reached a distant point at the edge of our solar system where there is no outward motion of solar wind.
Space Exploration
Dec 13, 2010
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(PhysOrg.com) -- The unusual "knot" in the bright, narrow ribbon of neutral atoms emanating in from the boundary between our solar system and interstellar space appears to have "untied," according to a paper published online ...
Space Exploration
Sep 30, 2010
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The heliosphere is a bubble in space "blown" into the interstellar medium (the hydrogen and helium gas that permeates the galaxy) by the solar wind. Although electrically neutral atoms from interstellar volume can penetrate this bubble, virtually all of the material in the heliosphere emanates from the Sun itself. It was thought for decades that it extends in a long comet-like heliotail, but in 2009 data from the Cassini and IBEX show a different shape. However, depiction of the heliotail is still common. Another change is that the heliosheath area is not smooth but filled with magnetic bubbles.NASA 2011
For the first ten billion kilometres of its radius, the solar wind travels at over a million km per hour. As it begins to drop out with the interstellar medium, it slows down before finally ceasing altogether. The point where the solar wind slows down is the termination shock; then there is the heliosheath area; then the point where the interstellar medium and solar wind pressures balance is called the heliopause; the point where the interstellar medium, traveling in the opposite direction, slows down as it collides with the heliosphere is the bow shock.
As of June 2011, the heliosheath area is thought to be filled with magnetic bubbles (each about 1 AU wide), creating a "foamy zone". The theory helps explain in situ heliosphere measurements by the two Voyager probes.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
