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Hi, this is Leila Mays. I'm a research scientist at Goddard.
You are viewing a solar wind simulation called ENLIL from Dr. Dusan Odstricil.
You can think of this as weather map for the solar system.
This simulation provides solar wind predictions at Pluto for the New Horizons fly by.
New Horizons' trajectory is the white line starting from near the Earth
when it launched in 2006, and it has taken 9.5 years to reach pluto in 2015.
The sun is at the center, and we are viewing the plane of the planets
from above as we are zooming out of the inner solar system.
The planets are labeled as circles and spacecraft by squares.
The color is showing the density of particles in the solar wind, which are always streaming out of the sun.
And near the Earth, the solar wind speed is around 1 million miles per hour.
You can see that the solar wind structures maintain their shape at large distances.
The black outlines you see are Coronal Mass Ejections from the sun,
which expand and elongate as they flow out. You can see them being
captured by the solar wind structures and merge to form
Global Merged Interaction Regions which the New Horizons spacecraft can observe as enhancements.
Coronal mass ejections can take about 5 months to reach Pluto
so this simulation begins 6 months ago and includes information
about over 100 coronal mass ejections. Now we start to
in on Pluto before the time of the New Horizons fly by
closest approach in mid-July.
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