Observation of Magnetic Waves Excited by Newborn Interstellar Pickup He plus Observed by the Voyager 2 Spacecraft at 30 au

Academic Article

Abstract

  • Abstract We report two observations of magnetic waves due to He+ pickup ions observed by the Voyager 2 spacecraft in mid-1989 to demonstrate that such waves occur as far out as ∼30 au from the Sun. The observations are sufficiently far from planets, interplanetary shocks, and other possible sources of energetic particles to make newborn interstellar He+ the only likely explanation for the source of the waves. Additionally, the low-frequency waves that might be expected for a variety of cometary pickup species are not seen. The events studied here were picked from a preliminary list of ∼300 events that were discovered based on polarization signatures in daily spectrograms of the magnetic field between 1977 and 1990. Analysis of those observations is ongoing. We present an analysis of these two observations using the same techniques we have employed for recently reported observations closer to the Sun.
  • Authors

  • Argall, Matthew R
  • Hollick, Sophia J
  • Pine, Zackary B
  • Smith, Charles
  • Joyce, Colin
  • Isenberg, Philip A
  • Vasquez, Bernard J
  • Schwadron, Nathan
  • Sokol, Justyna M
  • Bzowski, Maciej
  • Burlaga, Leonard F
  • Status

    Publication Date

  • November 1, 2017
  • Has Subject Area

    Keywords

  • Sun: heliosphere
  • magnetic fields
  • solar wind
  • turbulence
  • waves
  • Digital Object Identifier (doi)

    Start Page

  • 61
  • End Page

  • 61
  • Volume

  • 849
  • Issue

  • 1