11 Years Charting The Edge of The Solar System
-
- Written by:
- Kathalina Tran
-
- Produced by:
- Joy Ng
- View full credits
Watch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.
Music credits: “End of Days - Joe Mason Remix” by Connor Shambrook [BMI], Cyrus Reynolds [BMI], Flynn Hase Spence [ASCAP], Joseph Scott Mason [APRA]; “Brainstorming” by Laurent Dury [SACEM]; “Flight of the Leaf Remix” by Julie Gruss [GEMA], Laurent Dury [SAXEM]; “Ticks and Thoughts” by Laurent Dury [SACEM]; “Intimate Journey” by Laurent Vernerey [SACEM], Nicolas de Ferran [SACEM] from Universal Production Music
Complete transcript available.
Far, far beyond the orbits of the planets lie the hazy outlines of the magnetic bubble in space that we call home.
This is the heliosphere, the vast bubble that is generated by the Sun’s magnetic field and envelops all the planets. The borders of this cosmic bubble are not fixed. In response to the Sun’s gasps and sighs, they shrink and stretch over the years.
Now, for the first time, scientists have used an entire solar cycle of data from NASA’s IBEX spacecraft to study how the heliosphere changes over time. Solar cycles last roughly 11 years, as the Sun swings from seasons of high to low activity, and back to high again. With IBEX’s long record, scientists were eager to examine how the Sun’s mood swings play out at the edge of the heliosphere. The results show the shifting outer heliosphere in great detail, deftly sketch the heliosphere’s shape — a matter of debate in recent years, and hint at processes behind one of its most puzzling features. These findings, along with a newly fine-tuned data set, are published in The Astrophysical Journal Supplements on June 10, 2020.
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. However, individual items should be credited as indicated above.
-
Animators
- Adriana Manrique Gutierrez (KBR Wyle Services, LLC)
- Jonathan North (KBR Wyle Services, LLC)
- Joy Ng (KBR Wyle Services, LLC)
- Krystofer Kim (KBR Wyle Services, LLC)
- Walt Feimer (KBR Wyle Services, LLC)
-
Data visualizer
- Tom Bridgman (Global Science and Technology, Inc.)
-
Writer
- Kathalina Tran (SGT) [Lead]
-
Scientists
- Dave McComas (SwRI)
- Eric Christian (NASA/HQ)
- Jamey Szalay (Princeton University)
-
Producer
- Joy Ng (KBR Wyle Services, LLC) [Lead]
-
Narrator
- Joy Ng (KBR Wyle Services, LLC)
Missions
This visualization is related to the following missions:Series
This visualization can be found in the following series:Papers used in this visualization
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4365/ab8dc2
Related Pages
-
-
ID: 14290 Produced Video
![Watch this video on the NASA Solar System Exploration Instagram page.Complete transcript available.Music credits: “Peaks and Spikes [Instrumental]” by Max van Thun [GEMA]](/vis/a010000/a014200/a014290/14290_HeliosphereRipples_YouTube.00001_print.jpg)
The Heliosphere Has Ripples!
Read moreNASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX mission, has helped researchers learn something new about the heliosphere – the magnetic bubble created by the Sun that we live in. It turns out, the heliosphere has ripples! These ripples also change – likely due to influences from the Sun itself.The paper explaining the results was published in Nature Astronomy. ||
-
ID: 11382 Produced Video
Five Years of Great Discoveries for NASA's IBEX
Read moreLaunched on Oct. 19, 2008, the Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, spacecraft, is unique to NASA's heliophysics fleet: it images the outer boundary of the heliosphere, a boundary at the furthest edges of the solar system, far past the planets, some 8 million miles away. There, the constant stream of solar particles flowing off the sun, the solar wind, pushes up against the interstellar material flowing in from the local galactic neighborhood.IBEX is also different because it creates images from particles instead of light. IBEX, scientists create maps from the observed neutral atoms. Some are of non-solar origin, others were created by collisions of solar wind particles with other neutral atoms far from the sun. Observing where these energetic neutral atoms, or ENAs, come from describes what's going on in these distant regions. Over the course of six months and many orbits around Earth, IBEX can paint a picture of the entire sky in ENAs.During its first five years, IBEX has made some astounding discoveries.IBEX is a NASA Heliophysics Small Explorer mission. The Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, leads IBEX with teams of national and international partners. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., manages the Explorers Program for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. ||
-
ID: 10908 Produced Video
IBEX: Observing the Sun's Horizon
Read moreThe Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, is the first mission designed to map the entire region of the boundary of our Solar System. As charged particles from the Sun, called the "solar wind," flow outward well beyond the orbits of the planets, they collide with the material between the stars, called the "interstellar medium" (ISM). These interactions create energetic neutral atoms (ENAs), particles with no charge that move very quickly. This region emits no light that can be collected by conventional telescopes so, instead, IBEX measures the particles that happen to be traveling inward from the boundary. IBEX contains two detectors designed to collect and measure ENAs, providing data about the mass, location, direction of origin, and energy of these particles. From these data, maps of the boundary are created. IBEX's sole, focused science objective is to discover the nature of the interactions between the solar wind and the interstellar medium at the edge of our Solar System. ||
-
ID: 10906 Produced Video
NASA's IBEX Spacecraft Reveals New Observations of Interstellar Matter
Read moreA great magnetic bubble surrounds the solar system as it cruises through the galaxy. The sun pumps the inside of the bubble full of solar particles that stream out to the edge until they collide with the material that fills the rest of the galaxy, at a complex boundary called the heliosheath. On the other side of the boundary, electrically charged particles from the galactic wind blow by, but rebound off the heliosheath, never to enter the solar system. Neutral particles, on the other hand, are a different story. They saunter across the boundary as if it weren't there, continuing on another 7.5 billion miles for 30 years until they get caught by the sun's gravity, and sling shot around the star. There, NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer lies in wait for them. Known as IBEX for short, this spacecraft methodically measures these samples of the mysterious neighborhood beyond our home. IBEX scans the entire sky once a year, and every February, its instruments point in the correct direction to intercept incoming neutral atoms. IBEX counted those atoms in 2009 and 2010 and has now captured the best and most complete glimpse of the material that lies so far outside our own system. The results? It's an alien environment out there: the material in that galactic wind doesn't look like the same stuff our solar system is made of.More than just helping to determine the distribution of elements in the galactic wind, these new measurements give clues about how and where our solar system formed, the forces that physically shape our solar system, and even the history of other stars in the Milky Way.In a series of science papers appearing in the Astrophysics Journal on January 31, 2012, scientists report that for every 20 neon atoms in the galactic wind, there are 74 oxygen atoms. In our own solar system, however, for every 20 neon atoms there are 111 oxygen atoms. That translates to more oxygen in any given slice of the solar system than in the local interstellar space. For media associated with this release, go to #10905 and #3900. ||
-
ID: 10722 Produced Video
IBEX Spacecraft Finds Discoveries Close to Home
Read moreIBEX found that Energetic Neutral Atoms, or ENAs, are coming from a region just outside Earth's magnetopause where nearly stationary protons from the solar wind interact with the tenuous cloud of hydrogen atoms in Earth's exosphere. ||
-
ID: 10669 Produced Video
NASA Mission Shows Evolution of Conditions at Edge of Solar System
Read moreNew data from NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, spacecraft, reveal that conditions at the edge of our solar system may be much more dynamic than previously thought. Future exploration missions will benefit in design and mission objectives from a better understanding of the changing conditions in this outer region of our solar system.The IBEX has produced a new set of "all-sky" maps of our solar system's interaction with the galaxy, allowing researchers to continue viewing and studying the interaction between our galaxy and sun. The new maps reveal changing conditions in the region that separates the nearest reaches of our galaxy, called the local interstellar medium, from our heliosphere — a protective bubble that shields and protects our solar system.In October 2009, scientists announced that the first map data produced by IBEX revealed an unpredicted bright ribbon of energetic neutral atoms emanating toward the sun from the edge of the solar system. This discovery was unexpected to scientists, because the ribbon of bright emissions did not resemble any previous theoretical models of the region.The IBEX spacecraft creates sky maps by measuring and counting particles referred to as energetic neutral atoms that are created in an area of our solar system known as the interstellar boundary region. This imaging technique is required since this region emits no light that can be collected by conventional telescopes. This interstellar boundary is where charged particles from the sun, called the solar wind, flow outward far beyond the orbits of the planets and collide with material between stars. These collisions cause energetic neutral atoms to travel inward toward the sun from interstellar space at velocities ranging from 100,000 mph to more than 2.4 million mph.This second set of all-sky maps, created using data collected during six months of observations, show the evolution of the interstellar boundary region. The maps help delineate the interstellar boundary region, the area at the edge of our solar system that shields it from most of the dangerous galactic cosmic radiation that would otherwise enter from interstellar space. The new findings were published this week in the Journal of Geophysical Research - Space Physics, a publication of the American Geophysical Union. ||
-
ID: 3635 Visualization
IBEX First Skymap Release
Read moreThe Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission science team has used data from NASA's IBEX spacecraft to construct the first-ever all-sky map of the interactions occurring at the edge of the solar system, where the sun's influence diminishes and interacts with the interstellar medium. The interstellar boundary region shields our solar system from most of the dangerous galactic cosmic radiation that would otherwise enter from interstellar space.This visualization illustrates the IBEX satellite in Earth orbit (the orbit reaching almost as far as the orbit of the Moon) and pulls out to beyond the heliopause boundary (the true 3-D nature of the boundary is reduced to a 2-D spherical surface). The sphere with the skymap opens to reproject the data into a near-Aitoff type map projection.The skymap shows the measured flux of energetic neutral atoms (ENAs). ||
-
ID: 10351 Produced Video
Launch and Deployment of IBEX
Read moreThis animation show the IBEX spacecraft being launched on a pegasus delivery system till it's on station near the Moon. ||
-
-
-
ID: 20299 Animation
Parker Science Result animations
Read moreOn Dec. 4, 2019, four new papers in the journal Nature describe what scientists working with data from NASA's Parker Solar Probe have learned from this unprecedented exploration of our star — and what they look forward to learning next. These findings reveal new information about the behavior of the material and particles that speed away from the Sun, bringing scientists closer to answering fundamental questions about the physics of our star. These animations represent five of those findings. ||
-
ID: 11429 Produced Video
Sun Magnetic Field Flip Live Shots and Media Resources
Read moreOn Dec. 6, 2013, NASA scientists Alex Young and Holly Gilbert discussed how the sun's magnetic field is in the process of flipping. ||
-
ID: 20200 Animation
Heliotail
Read moreAnimation showing Heliotail solar winds. || heliotail animation || Heliotail_0090000877_print.jpg (1024x576) [68.7 KB] || Heliotail_00900_web.png (320x180) [55.2 KB] || Heliotail_00900_thm.png (80x40) [5.5 KB] || heliotail.webmhd.webm (960x540) [3.5 MB] || frames/3840x2160_16x9_60p/Helio/ (3840x2160) [64.0 KB] || heliotail.mp4 (3840x2160) [16.2 MB] ||
-
ID: 10905 Produced Video
Interstellar Neutral Atoms
Read moreAnimation of the interstellar interaction with our Sun-one of billions of stars that orbits around the galaxy. As we zoom in through the galaxy we can see our heliosphere; then if we travel along with the interstellar material, we can see how only a very rare few are directed along precisely the right path to make the 30 year, 15 billion mile journey and enter IBEX's low energy sensor and be detected.For press release media associated with this animation, go: here. ||
-
ID: 20185 Animation
Heliopause Cycle
Read moreThis animation shows the heliosphere expanding and contracting in response to the solar cycle. As the sun reaches solar maximum, the solar wind increases and expands the heliosphere. During solar minimum, the heliosphere contracts. ||
-
ID: 3770 Visualization
IBEX Observes Changes in Heliopause Emission
Read moreThe camera view moves from the heliosphere 'nose', the apparent direction of the heliopause relative to the interstellar wind, towards the 'knot'. The 'knot' represents a direction of high emission of neutral atoms which has changed significantly in the six months since the first IBEX map.We fade-in an artistic conception of the 'knot', which untangles during the six months as we fade to the second IBEX map. ||
-
ID: 10332 Produced Video
Solar Neutral Particles
Read moreThis animation shows a charged solar particle's path leaving the sun, while following the magnetic field lines out to the heliosheath. The solar particle hits a hydrogen atom, stealing its electron and becoming neutral. We then follow it until we see it hit one of IBEX's detectors. ||
-
ID: 3514 Visualization
IBEX Orbit Visualization
Read moreThe Interstellar Boundary EXplorer (IBEX) mission will observe the boundary between the heliosphere and the interstellar medium from a location near the Earth. The mission will measure the flux of hydrogen Energetic Neutral Atoms (ENAs) which can be directed towards the Sun by an interaction with the heliosheath. In this visualization, we see the orbit of the spacecraft orbit (green) in relation to the Earth, the orbit of the Moon (gray), and Sun. For more information, visit the IBEX Mission Project Page at Southwest Research Institute which is managing the mission. We also have additional video outlining the mission (link). ||
-
ID: 20134 Animation
Journey to the Heliopause II
Read moreThis animation is an update HD version of #010149 that starts at the Sun and pulls back to reveal the Heliosphere. ||
-
ID: 20131 Animation
Interstellar Boundry Explorer (IBEX)
Read moreThese animations show IBEX and it's two imagers specialized to detect neutral atoms from the solar system's outer boundaries and galactic medium. ||
-