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IBEX satellite finds ribbon-like structure at edge of heliosphere

October 16, 2009

The invisible structures of space are becoming less so, as scientists look out to the far edges of the solar wind bubble that separates our solar system from the interstellar cloud through which it flies. Using the High Energy Neutral Atom Imager, led by Los Alamos National Laboratory, the NASA Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission has sent back data that indicates a "noodle soup" of solar material has accumulated at the outer fringes of the heliosphere bubble.

As the solar wind streams out far beyond Pluto, racing a million miles per hour, it reaches the edge of our bubble and collides with the material between the stars, the interstellar medium. A shock wave forms at that intersection point. The Los Alamos camera is designed to detect the particles that are heated and stream away from that boundary, specifically the density and temperature of atoms that form the core of that layer. The High Energy Neutral Atom Imager instrument is particularly important because its design parameters are well matched to the temperature of most of the soup; about a million degrees centigrade (1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit).

One of the five IBEX papers appearing in Science this week, LANL's lead contribution is "Structures and Spectral Variations of the Outer Heliosphere in IBEX Energetic Neutral Atom Maps." In the paper, author Herbert Funsten notes "We have discovered an arc-shaped ribbon of high-pressure material that looks to be piled-up material from the Sun. The IBEX maps and the discovery of the ribbon are completely different from what we thought it should look like."

"We were expecting tie-dye and instead found noodle soup," Funsten said.

What the mission has not found is what they were expecting, that is, evidence of large-scale dynamic processes that might be analogous to storms and tornados from the collision of a cold front and a warm front. A striking result is that "our maps show structure and energy spectra that are completely different from what any model has predicted," he noted.

"The ribbon follows a circular arc of high pressure that we believe is centered on the direction of the magnetic field of the interstellar cloud through which we are moving," Funsten said. This magnetic field seems to fundamentally organize the interaction region.

The results of IBEX not only reveal fundamental properties of the heliosheath but also provide key information about the properties of the interstellar cloud through which our galaxy is moving. We will be moving out of the cloud in about 10,000 years; the IBEX results will help us understand how the Earth's space environment might be different when this happens.

IBEX is the latest in NASA's series of low-cost, rapidly developed Small Explorers space missions. Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, leads and developed the mission with a team of national and international partners. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the Explorers Program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

For IBEX, SwRI is partnering with Orbital Science Corporation, Los Alamos National Laboratory, University of California, Riverside, Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, the University of New Hampshire, the Applied Physics Laboratory and the University of Southern California. The team also includes a number of American and international scientists from universities and other institutions, as well as Chicago's Adler Planetarium, which is leading education and public outreach for the mission.

DOE/Los Alamos National Laboratory

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Satellite reveals surprising cosmic 'weather' at edge of solar system
The first solar system energetic particle maps show an unexpected landmark occurring at the outer edge of the solar wind bubble surrounding the solar system.

Cassini Helps Redraw Shape of Solar System
In a paper published Oct. 15 in Science, researchers from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) present a new view of the region of the sun's influence, or heliosphere, and the forces that shape it. Images from one of the Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument's sensors, the Ion and Neutral Camera (MIMI/INCA), on NASA's Cassini spacecraft suggest that the heliosphere may not have the comet-like shape predicted by existing models.

IBEX discovers that galactic magnetic fields may control the boundaries of our solar system
The first all-sky maps developed by NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft, the initial mission to examine the global interactions occurring at the edge of the solar system, suggest that the galactic magnetic fields had a far greater impact on Earth's history than previously conceived, and the future of our planet and others may depend, in part, on how the galactic magnetic fields change with time.

Cosmic Rays Hit Space Age High
Planning a trip to Mars? Take plenty of shielding. According to sensors on NASA's ACE (Advanced Composition Explorer) spacecraft, galactic cosmic rays have just hit a Space Age high.

Solar Cycle Driven by More than Sunspots; Sun Also Bombards Earth with High-Speed Streams of Wind
Challenging conventional wisdom, new research finds that the number of sunspots provides an incomplete measure of changes in the Sun's impact on Earth over the course of the 11-year solar cycle.

NASA spacecraft ready to explore outer solar system
The first NASA spacecraft to image and map the dynamic interactions taking place where the hot solar wind slams into the cold expanse of space is ready for launch Oct. 19. The two-year mission will begin from the Kwajalein Atoll, a part of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean.

Voyager 2 Proves the Solar System is Squashed
NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft has followed its twin Voyager 1 into the solar system's final frontier, a vast region at the edge of our solar system where the solar wind runs up against the thin gas between the stars.

Computer simulation predicts Voyager 2 will reach major milestone in space in late 2007-early 2008
Using a computer model simulation, Haruichi Washimi, a physicist at UC Riverside, has predicted when the interplanetary spacecraft Voyager 2 will cross the "termination shock," the spherical shell around the solar system that marks where the solar wind slows down to subsonic speed.

Voyager data may reveal trajectory of solar system
Nearly 30 years after launch, the two Voyager spacecraft are still operational and returning useful data. In their early years they produced some of the first close up images of the large outer planets.

AGU Journal European highlights - 30 October 2002
The following highlights summarize research papers in Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) and Paleoceanography (PA). The papers related to these Highlights will be printed in the next paper issues of the respective journals following their electronic publication.

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