Abstract
One of the primary objectives of the Rosetta Plasma Consortium, a suite
of five plasma instruments on-board the Rosetta spacecraft, is to
observe the formation and evolution of plasma interaction regions at the
comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P/CG). Observations made between 2015
April and 2016 February show that solar wind-cometary plasma interaction
boundaries and regions formed around 2015 mid-April and lasted through
early 2016 January. At least two regions were observed, separated by an
ion-neutral collisionopause boundary. The inner region was located on
the nucleus side of the boundary and was characterized by low-energy
water-group ions, reduced magnetic field pileup and enhanced electron
densities. The outer region was located outside of the boundary and was
characterized by reduced electron densities, water-group ions that are
accelerated to energies above 100 eV and enhanced magnetic field pileup
compared to the inner region. The boundary discussed here is outside of
the diamagnetic cavity and shows characteristics similar to observations
made on-board the Giotto spacecraft in the ion pileup region at
1P/Halley. We find that the boundary is likely to be related to
ion-neutral collisions and that its location is influenced by
variability in the neutral density and the solar wind dynamic pressure.
Original language | English |
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Number of pages | 46 |
Journal | Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society |
Volume | 462 |
Early online date | 20 Jul 2016 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2016 |
MoE publication type | A1 Journal article-refereed |
Event | ESLAB Symposium - Leiden, Netherlands Duration: 14 Mar 2016 → 18 Mar 2016 Conference number: 50 |
Keywords
- plasmas
- solar wind
- comets: general