Understanding how the Sun changes though its 11-year sunspot cycle and how these changes affect the vast space around the Sun - the heliosphere - has been one of the principal objectives of space research since the advent of the space age. This book presents the evolution of the heliosphere through an entire solar activity cycle. The last solar cycle (cycle 23) has been the best observed from both the Earth and from a fleet of spacecraft. Of these, the joint ESA-NASA Ulysses probe has provided continuous observations of the state of the heliosphere since 1990 from a unique vantage point,...
Understanding how the Sun changes though its 11-year sunspot cycle and how these changes affect the vast space around the Sun - the heliosphere - h...
A. Balogh, J.T. Gosling, J.R. Jokipii, R. Kallenbach, H. Kunow
A Corotating Interaction Region (CIR) is the result of the interaction of fast solar wind with slower solar wind ahead. CIRs have a very large three-dimensional ex- tent and are the dominant large-scale structure in the heliosphere on the declining and minimum phase of the solar activity cycle. Until recently, however, CIRs could only be observed close to the ecliptic plane, and their three-dimensional structure was therefore not obvious to observers and theoreticians alike. Ulysses was the first spacecraft allowing direct exploration of the third dimen- sion of the heliosphere. Since 1992,...
A Corotating Interaction Region (CIR) is the result of the interaction of fast solar wind with slower solar wind ahead. CIRs have a very large three-d...
