interesting & news & science 03 Jul 2008 08:41 am
First images of solar system’s invisible frontier
The twin STEREO spacecraft were launched in 2006 into Earth’s orbit about the sun to obtain stereo pictures of the sun’s surface and to measure magnetic fields and ion fluxes associated with solar explosions.
Between June and October 2007, however, the suprathermal electron sensor in the IMPACT (In-situ Measurements of Particles and CME Transients) suite of instruments on board each STEREO spacecraft detected neutral atoms originating from the same spot in the sky: the shock front and the heliosheath beyond, where the sun plunges through the interstellar medium.
“The suprathermal electron sensors were designed to detect charged electrons, which fluctuate in intensity depending on the magnetic field,” said lead author Linghua Wang, a graduate student in UC Berkeley’s Department of Physics. “We were surprised that these particle intensities didn’t depend on the magnetic field, which meant they must be neutral atoms.”
Read more: First images of solar system’s invisible frontier | Eureka! Science News
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