Suprathermal ions in the solar wind from the Voyager spacecraft: Instrument modeling and background analysis

13th Annual International Astrophysics Conference: Voyager, IBEX, and the Interstellar Medium

物理学;天文学

Randol, B.M.^1 ; Christian, E.R.^1

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt

MD

20771, United States^1

关键词: Background analysis;    Cosmic ray instruments;    Instrument Modeling;    Outer heliosphere;    Semi-analytical model;    Suprathermal tail;    Termination shocks;    Voyager spacecraft;   

Others  :  https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/577/1/012020/pdf
DOI  :  10.1088/1742-6596/577/1/012020

学科分类：天文学(综合)

来源: IOP

【 摘 要 】

Using publicly available data from the Voyager Low Energy Charged Particle (LECP) instruments, we investigate the form of the solar wind ion suprathermal tail in the outer heliosphere inside the termination shock. This tail has a commonly observed form in the inner heliosphere, that is, a power law with a particular spectral index. The Voyager spacecraft have taken data beyond 100 AU, farther than any other spacecraft. However, during extended periods of time, the data appears to be mostly background. We have developed a technique to self-consistently estimate the background seen by LECP due to cosmic rays using data from the Voyager cosmic ray instruments and a simple, semi-analytical model of the LECP instruments.