相关论文: Voyager 2 enters interstellar space
The misalignment of the solar rotation axis and the magnetic axis of the Sun produces a periodic reversal of the Parker spiral magnetic field and the sectored solar wind. The compression of the sectors is expected to lead to reconnection in…
The physical conditions within our heliosphere are driven by the Sun's motion through an evolving interstellar environment that remains largely unexplored. The next generation of outer heliosphere and interstellar explorers will answer…
Binary stars are crucial laboratories for stellar physics, so have been photometric targets for space missions beginning with the very first orbiting telescope (OAO-2) launched in 1968. This review traces the binary stars observed and the…
There was an expectation that the magnetic field direction would rotate dramatically across the heliopause (HP). This rotation was used as one of the criteria to determine if Voyager 1 (V1) had crossed the HP. Recently the Voyager team…
Fifty years ago, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) built and flew the first successful spacecraft to another planet: Mariner 2 to Venus. This paper discusses the context of this mission at a crucial phase in the space race between the…
Opher et al. 2006 showed that an interstellar magnetic field parallel to the plane defined by the deflection of interstellar hydrogen atoms can produce a north/south asymmetry in the distortion of the solar wind termination shock. This…
Since crossing the heliopause on August 25, 2012, Voyager 1 observed reductions in galactic cosmic ray count rates caused by a time-varying depletion of particles with pitch angles near 90-deg, while intensities of particles with other…
The Sun and the undisturbed interstellar magnetic field and plasma velocity vectors (Bis,Vis) define a mirror symmetry plane of the flow at large heliospheric distances. We show that for the Bis direction defined by IBEX Ribbon center, the…
The science fiction film, Interstellar, tells the story of a team of astronauts searching a distant galaxy for habitable planets to colonize. Interstellar's story draws heavily from contemporary science. The film makes reference to a range…
We show that the Kepler spacecraft in two-reaction wheel mode of operation is very well suited for the study of eclipsing binary star systems. Continued observations of the Kepler field will provide the most enduring and long-term valuable…
Our solar system's path has recently been shown to potentially intersect dense interstellar clouds 2 and 7 million years ago: the Local Lynx of Cold Cloud and the edge of the Local Bubble. These clouds compressed the heliosphere, directly…
Two new interplanetary technologies have advanced in the past decade to the point where they may enable exciting, affordable missions that reach further and faster deep into the outer regions of our solar system: (i) small and capable…
In situ measurements of the heliospheric particle populations by the Voyager spacecraft can only be put in an appropriate context with remote-sensing observations of energetic and interstellar neutral atoms (ENAs and ISN, respectively) at 1…
The Voyager probes are the furthest, still active, spacecraft ever launched from Earth. During their 38-year trip, they have collected data regarding solar wind properties (such as the plasma velocity and magnetic field intensity).…
We study processes related to magnetic reconnection and plasma turbulence occurring in the presence of the heliopause (HP) and the heliospheric current sheet. It is shown that the interaction of plasmoids initiated by magnetic reconnection…
We discuss results of magnetohydrodynamical model simulations of plasma dynamics in the proximity of the heliopause (HP). The model is shown to fit details of the magnetic field variations observed by Voyager 1 spacecraft during the…
Circumbinary planets are generally more likely to transit than equivalent single-star planets, but practically the geometry and orbital dynamics of circumbinary planets make the chance of observing a transit inherently time-dependent. In…
There is currently a controversy as to whether Voyager 1 has already crossed the Termination Shock, the first boundary of the Heliosphere. The region between the Termination Shock and the Heliopause, the Helisheath, is one of the most…
The first ever double pulsar, discovered by our team a few months ago, consists of two pulsars, one with period of 22 ms and the other with a period of 2.7 s. This binary system with a period of only 2.4-hr provides a truly unique…
Relativistic rigid motion suggests a new version for the so-called `twin paradox', comparing the ages of two astronauts on a very long spaceship. Although there is always an instantaneous inertial frame in which the whole spaceship, being…