Starting with the IBEX satellite in orbit around the Earth, we zoom out to beyond the orbit of Neptune, illustrating the direction of the Sun relative to the local stars (red arrow) and relative to the local interstellar medium (violet arrow). These directions are different because the local interstellar medium (mostly gas and dust) move relative to the local stars.
The boundaries of the termination shock (red ellipsoidal surface) and heliopause (green) created by the interaction of the solar wind with the interstellar medium is displayed. The camera rotates to a view 'nose on' with the heliopause, and a sphere is faded in representing the region where the neutral atoms detected by IBEX originate. The sphere around the Sun is 'unwrapped' to reproject the IBEX data into an approximately Aitoff projection.", "items": [], "extra_data": {} }, { "id": 343779, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4087/#media_group_343779", "widget": "Video player", "title": "", "caption": "", "description": "Movie (with labels) of scope of measurements by IBEX. 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About every 230 million years it completes one orbit around the center of the Milky Way galaxy. The entire solar system comes along for the ride, of course, residing within a massive, magnetic bubble called the heliosphere. Like a brightly lit comet, it was assumed the heliosphere has a leading head and a trailing tail region where streams of charged particles released from the sun meet interstellar space. But the tail section has never been observed, until now. NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, spacecraft has mapped the boundaries of the tail for the first time. By combining observations from the first three years of IBEX imagery, scientists found that the tail is made of fast- and slow-moving particles that are twisted by the pushing and pulling of magnetic fields outside the solar system. Watch the video to learn more. || ", "release_date": "2013-08-15T00:00:00-04:00", "update_date": "2023-05-03T13:51:55.137488-04:00", "main_image": { "id": 462947, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011300/a011321/Ibex_data_original_1024.jpg", "filename": "Ibex_data_original_1024.jpg", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "A NASA spacecraft observes the trailing edge of the solar system.", "width": 1024, "height": 576, "pixels": 589824 } }, { "id": 11301, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11301/", "page_type": "Produced Video", "title": "IBEX Provides First View Of the Solar System’s Tail", "description": "This page contains resources from the July 10, 2013 media briefing.To watch the media briefing on YouTube, click here.To view the web short on YouTube about this story, click here.NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, recently mapped the boundaries of the solar system’s tail, called the heliotail. By combining observations from the first three years of IBEX imagery, scientists have mapped out a tail that shows a combination of fast and slow moving particles. The entire structure twisted, because it experiences the pushing and pulling of magnetic fields outside the solar system. || ", "release_date": "2013-07-10T12:30:00-04:00", "update_date": "2023-11-14T00:18:51.722229-05:00", "main_image": { "id": 463916, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011300/a011301/Sun_position_MW_XV6.0_final.jpg", "filename": "Sun_position_MW_XV6.0_final.jpg", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "The solar journey through space is carrying us through a cluster of very low density interstellar clouds. Right now the Sun is inside of a cloud that is so tenuous that the interstellar gas detected by IBEX is as sparse as a handful of air stretched over a column that is hundreds of light years long. These clouds are identified by their motions. Labels. Credit: NASA/Adler/U. Chicago/Wesleyan", "width": 4184, "height": 4184, "pixels": 17505856 } }, { "id": 11306, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11306/", "page_type": "Produced Video", "title": "IBEX Maps Solar System's Tail", "description": "NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, recently mapped the boundaries of the solar system’s tail, called the heliotail. By combining observations from the first three years of IBEX imagery, scientists have mapped out a tail that shows a combination of fast and slow moving particles. The entire structure twisted, because it experiences the pushing and pulling of magnetic fields outside the solar system.To view this video on YouTube, click here. || ", "release_date": "2013-07-10T12:30:00-04:00", "update_date": "2023-05-03T13:52:01.170264-04:00", "main_image": { "id": 463958, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011300/a011306/heliotail720.jpg", "filename": "heliotail720.jpg", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "Web short covering the IBEX science resultFor complete transcript, click here.", "width": 1280, "height": 720, "pixels": 921600 } } ], "sources": [], "products": [], "newer_versions": [], "older_versions": [], "alternate_versions": [] }