2015/08/28 by Brian E. Wood, B E Wood, Hans-Reinhard Mueller +1
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Boundary (topology) #Component (thermodynamics) #Distribution (mathematics) #Helium #Interstellar medium #Neutral particle #Particle (ecology) #Quality (philosophy) #Solar and Space Plasma Dynamics #Statistical Mechanics and Entropy #astro-ph.SR
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1742-6596/642/1/012029
To appear in the Proceedings of the 14th Annual Astrophysics Conference, Linear and Nonlinear Particle Energization Throughout the Heliosphere and Beyond, IOP Conference Series
arxiv created 2015/08/28 · openalex publication_date 2015/09/01 · arxiv updated 2015/10/28 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We relax the usual assumption of Maxwellian velocity distributions in the interstellar medium (ISM) in the analysis of neutral He particle data from Ulysses and the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX). For Ulysses , the possibility that a narrow component from heavy neutrals is contaminating the He signal is considered, which could potentially explain the lower ISM temperature measured by Ulysses compared to IBEX. The expected heavy element contribution is about an order of magnitude too small to resolve that discrepancy. For IBEX, we find that modest asymmetries in the ISM velocity distribution can potentially improve the quality of fit to the first two years of data, and perhaps improve agreement with the Ulysses measurements.