Voyager 2 Proves Solar
System Is Squashed
San Francisco, CA. - NASA's Voyager 2
spacecraft has followed its twin Voyager 1 into
the solar system's final frontier, a vast region
at the edge of our solar system where the solar
wind runs up against the thin gas between the
stars.
However, Voyager 2 took a
different path, entering this region, called the
heliosheath, on August 30, 2007. Because Voyager
2 crossed the heliosheath boundary, called the
solar wind termination shock, about 10 billion
miles away from Voyager 1 and almost a billion
miles closer to the sun, it confirmed that our
solar system is "
squashed" or "
dented"- that the bubble carved into interstellar
space by the solar wind is not perfectly round.
Where Voyager 2 made its crossing, the bubble is
pushed in closer to the sun by the local
interstellar magnetic field.
"Voyager 2 continues its journey of
discovery, crossing the termination shock
multiple times as it entered the outermost layer
of the giant heliospheric bubble surrounding the
Sun and joined Voyager 1 in the last leg of the
race to interstellar space." said Voyager Project
Scientist Dr. Edward Stone of the California
Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif.
The solar wind is a thin gas of electrically
charged particles (plasma) blown into space by
the sun. The solar wind blows in all directions,
carving a bubble into interstellar space that
extends past the orbit of Pluto. This bubble is
called the heliosphere, and Voyager 1 was the
first spacecraft to explore its outer layer, when
it crossed into the heliosheath in December 2004.
As Voyager 1 made this historic passage, it
encountered the shock wave that surrounds our
solar system called the solar wind termination
shock, where the solar wind is abruptly slowed by
pressure from the gas and magnetic field in
interstellar space.
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