Berlin 2014 – scientific programme
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EP: Fachverband Extraterrestrische Physik
EP 5: Postersitzung
EP 5.19: Poster
Tuesday, March 18, 2014, 16:30–18:30, DO24 Foyer
Studying the near-Sun dust environment with Solar Probe Plus — •Jens Rodmann1, Volker Bothmer1, Russ A. Howard2, Arnaud Thernisien2, Malte Venzmer1, and Angelos Vourlidas2 — 1Institut für Astrophysik, Universität Göttingen, Deutschland — 2Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, D.C., USA
Solar Probe Plus will be a ground-breaking mission to explore the innermost regions of the solar system. By flying down to ∼10 solar radii (∼0.05 AU), the mission will revolutionize our knowledge of the Near-Sun dust environment. This region is governed by a poorly understood interplay of dust delivery by sungrazing comets and radiation forces, the destruction of dust by sublimation, and interactions of dust particles with the ambient coronal plasma.
We will present the Solar Probe Plus mission and its scientific payload. Emphasis will be on two instruments that are directly relevant for dust-related science: (1) the Wide-field Imager for SolarPRobe (WISPR), a white-light heliospheric imager dedicated to study the solar wind, coronal mass ejections, and dust-plasma interactions; (2) the FIELDS Experiment for electric and magnetic field measurements in the solar wind, that can also detect telltale voltage signatures of dust-particle impacts on the spacecraft.
We will highlight simulations of the scattered-light emission from dust particles (F-corona) in order to assess the capabilities of the WISPR instrument to image the dust-free zone around the Sun. We will test whether dust density enhancements as predicted by dynamical simulations (e.g. Kobayashi et al. 2009) can be identified and resolved.