Welcome to the new version of CaltechAUTHORS. Login is currently restricted to library staff. If you notice any issues, please email coda@library.caltech.edu
Published July 12, 2013 | public
Journal Article

Magnetic Field Observations as Voyager 1 Entered the Heliosheath Depletion Region

Abstract

Magnetic fields measured by Voyager 1 (V1) show that the spacecraft crossed the boundary of an unexpected region five times between days 210 and ~238 in 2012. The magnetic field strength B increased across this boundary from ≈0.2 to ≈0.4 nanotesla, and B remained near 0.4 nanotesla until at least day 270, 2012. The strong magnetic fields were associated with unusually low counting rates of >0.5 mega–electron volt per nuclear particle. The direction of B did not change significantly across any of the five boundary crossings; it was very uniform and very close to the spiral magnetic field direction, which was observed throughout the heliosheath. The observations indicate that V1 entered a region of the heliosheath (the heliosheath depletion region), rather than the interstellar medium.

Additional Information

© 2013 American Association for the Advancement of Science. Received 21 January 2013; accepted 30 May 2013; Published online 27 June 2013. T. McClanahan and S. Kramer provided support in the processing of the data and D. Berdichevsky computed correction tables for the three sensors on each of the two magnetometers. N.F.N. was partially supported by NASA grant NNX12AC63G to the Catholic University of America. L.F.B. was supported by NASA contract NNG11PN48P. The data are available at NASA's Virtual Heliospheric Observatory (http://vho.nasa.gov/), maintained within the Heliospheric Physics Laboratory at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
October 24, 2023