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Published March 28, 2012 | Published
Journal Article Open

Sudden intensity increases and radial gradient changes of cosmic ray MeV electrons and protons observed at Voyager 1 beyond 111 AU in the heliosheath

Abstract

Voyager 1 has entered regions of different propagation conditions for energetic cosmic rays in the outer heliosheath at a distance of about 111 AU from the Sun. The low energy 6–14 MeV galactic electron intensity increased by ~20% over a time period ≤10 days and the electron radial intensity gradient abruptly decreased from ∼19%/AU to ∼8%/AU at 2009.7 at a radial distance of 111.2 AU. At about 2011.2 at a distance of 116.6 AU a second abrupt intensity increase of ∼25% was observed for electrons. After the second sudden electron increase the radial intensity gradient increased to 18%/AU. This large positive gradient and the ∼13 day periodic variations of >200 MeV particles observed near the end of 2011 indicate that V1 is still within the overall heliospheric modulating region. The implications of these results regarding the proximity of the heliopause are discussed.

Additional Information

© 2012 American Geophysical Union. Received 3 February 2012; revised 1 March 2012; accepted 2 March 2012; published 29 March 2012. The authors all appreciate the support of the Voyager program by JPL. The data used here comes from both the Voyager CRS experiments web-site (http://voyager.gsfc.nasa.gov) and from internally generated CRS documents. The Editor thanks two anonymous reviewers for their assistance in evaluating this paper.

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August 22, 2023
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