HR: 11:45h
AN: SH22A-06 INVITED     [Abstracts]
TI: Diagnostics of the Local Interstellar Medium in the Inner Heliosphere - A Coordinated Approach
AU: * Moebius, E
EM: eberhard.moebius@unh.edu
AF: Dept. of Physics and Inst. for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space, University of New Hampshire, Morse Hall, 39 College Road, Durham, NH 03824 United States
AB: The neutral component of the local interstellar medium (LISM) flows through the inner heliosphere due to the relative motion of the Sun and the surrounding medium. Diagnosing the recognizable flow distribution and flow pattern using UV backscattering, pickup ion, and direct neutral gas observations for several species allows us to unravel the conditions in the LISM and filtering processes that occur in the heliospheric boundary region. The combination of several solar, heliospheric, and astrophysics spacecraft, serving as a "great heliospheric observatory" are providing a synoptic view of the heliosphere-LISM interaction. A recent coordinated analysis effort of several simultaneous observations hosted by the International Space Science Institute (ISSI) has produced a consolidated set of the physical parameters for He. Direct neutral gas observations provide the kinetic parameters and pickup ions return the density with the least uncertainties. Starting with the reasonable assumption that all species in the undisturbed LISM have the same physical parameters as He, which reaches the inner heliosphere without significant modification by the heliospheric interface, a similar effort has started for interstellar H, whose characteristics is substantially altered. Making use of pickup ion, solar wind slowdown, and UV scattering observations at various distances from the Sun and a full chain of modeling from the pristine LISM to the inner heliosphere, the interstellar H density, element abundances, and ionization fractions, as well as the effects of the heliospheric interface on flow vector and temperature can be deduced. As LISM oxygen is similarly affected by the heliospheric interface as H the expected addition of O observations with IBEX in the near future will provide the crucial neutral gas distributions for a filtered species of the LISM.
DE: 2144 Interstellar gas
DE: 2151 Neutral particles
DE: 2152 Pickup ions
DE: 2162 Solar cycle variations (7536)
DE: 2194 Instruments and techniques
SC: SPA-Solar and Heliospheric Physics [SH]
MN: 2005 Joint Assembly