Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research | 2015 Oct 19
25 years ago, the Ulysses spacecraft was launched into space. Now, for the first time its complete set of measurements of interstellar dust has been analyzed.
[img3="The Ulysses mission was a joint project of NASA and ESA. One of the missions's goals was to measure interstellar dust particles that make their way into the solar system. (Credit: ESA)"]http://www.mps.mpg.de/4156596/standard_sans_both.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]When in 1990 the solar probe Ulysses embarked on its 19-year-long exploration tour, the participating researchers turned their attention not only to our Sun, but also to significantly smaller research objects: interstellar dust particles advancing from the depth of space into our solar system. Ulysses was the first mission with the goal to measure these tiny visitors and successfully detected more than 900 of them. Researchers under the leadership of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany and the International Space Science Institute (ISSI) in Switzerland present a comprehensive analysis of this largest data set of interstellar particles in three articles published today in the magazine “The Astrophysical Journal”. Their conclusion: Within the solar system velocity and flight direction of the dust particles can change more strongly than previously thought.
Perpetually our solar system moves through the Milky Way. For approximately 100 000 years it has been passing through the Local Interstellar Cloud, a cloud of interstellar matter, measuring about 30 light-years in diameter. Microscopic dust particles from this cloud make their way into the interior of our solar system. For researchers, they are messengers from the depths of space and provide basic information about our more distant cosmic home. In the past, several spacecraft have identified and characterized these "newcomers". These spacecraft include Galileo and Cassini, which traveled to the gas planets Jupiter and Saturn, as well as the mission Stardust, which in 2006 returned captured interstellar dust particles to Earth. ...
16 years of Ulysses Interstellar Dust Measurements in the Solar System:
- I. Mass Distribution and Gas-to-Dust Mass Ratio - Harald Krüger et al
- Astrophysical Journal 812(2):139 (2015 Oct 20) DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/812/2/139
- Astrophysical Journal 812(2):140 (2015 Oct 20) DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/812/2/140
arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1508.03242 > 13 Aug 2015
- Astrophysical Journal 812(2):141 (2015 Oct 20) DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/812/2/141