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 December 2006 | Published
Journal Article Open

Source and consequences of a large shock near 79 AU

Abstract

In March 2006, Voyager 2 (V2) observed a large interplanetary (IP) shock near 79 AU followed by a merged interaction region (MIR). This shock is comparable to the shock observed by V2 at 65 AU in October 2001; these two shocks are the largest observed by V2 since 1991 when V2 was at 35 AU. This shock provides the first opportunity to compare the plasma structure in an IP shock and MIR with the energetic particle fluxes in the termination shock (TS) foreshock region. The flux of >0.5 MeV particles observed by V2 decreased after the shock; the shock and MIR probably pushed the TS outward so that the foreshock region moved outside the distance of V2. The >70 MeV cosmic ray ions decreased in the MIR, probably due to the reduced inward transport caused by the enhanced magnetic field. We model two possible sources of this shock, fast streams from polar coronal holes and coronal mass ejections (CMEs); these sources, when combined, provide a reasonable match to the V2 data.

Additional Information

© 2006 by the American Geophysical Union. Received 24 August 2006; revised 19 October 2006; accepted 1 November 2006; published 12 December 2006. This work was supported at M.I.T. under NASA contract 959203 from JPL to MIT and at Caltech by NASA contract NAS7-03001. C. Wang is grateful to the grant NNSFC 40325010. N. F. Ness appreciates partial support by NASA grant NNG05GK25G to IACSCUA. This work was also supported in part by the International Collaboration Research Team Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. D. McComas and the SWOOPS observations were supported by the NASA Ulysses program.

Attached Files

Published - grl22383.pdf

Files

grl22383.pdf
Files (494.4 kB)
Name Size Download all
md5:a81bb4cfde76b73c5ce25a1f3effabfa
494.4 kB Preview Download

Additional details

Created:
August 22, 2023
Modified:
October 26, 2023