Heidelberg 2006 – scientific programme

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EP: Extraterrestrische Physik

EP 12: Heliosph
äre: Fernerkundung

EP 12.1: Invited Talk

Wednesday, March 15, 2006, 14:00–14:30, B

The IBEX mission: Seeing the world through energetic neutral particles — •Hans Joerg Dr.Fahr — Institut fuer Astrophysik der Universitaet Bonn, Auf dem Huegel 71, 53121 Bonn

The NASA spacecraft VOYAGER-1/2 perhaps will cross over the solar wind termination (ST) shock in the nearest future, but even when this happens, the possibilities to study this global plasma feature of the outer heliosphere are only of stigmatic and singular value. The global and time-dependent configuration of structures like the TS shock, the heliopause and the outer bowshock may nevertheless become a hot subject of thorough investigations already in the coming years thanks to new observational techniques developed for the new NASA SMEX satellite mission IBEX (Interstellar Background Explorer). This satellite will be launched in August 2007 and will measure spectral fluxes of energetic neutral particles (ENA‘s) over a wide range of energies from nearly all directions of the sky. In this talk it will be demonstrated how by monitoring of allsky spectral ENA fluxes from the outer heliosphere questions about the nature of the TS shock, the heliosheath magnetic field, pick-up ion injection into anomalous cosmic ray particles and the outer bowshock can be answered.