Book Description

All papers in this proceedings volume have been peer-reviewed. The solar wind is a tenuous ionized gas (plasma) that is continuously expelled from the Sunâs surface at supersonic speed. Somewhere around 100 astronomical units (100 times the distance from the Sun to the Earth) this flow becomes subsonic, and, in doing so, sets up a standing shock wave known as the termination shock. Beyond this shock is a region of subsonic, but very hot, plasma known as the inner heliosheath. In December of 2004, Voyager 1, one of two NASA satellites launched in 1977 to explore the solar system crossed the termination shock, and now finds itself inside the heliosheath. These proceedings provides several papers which analyze the Voyager data, as well as many theoretical papers which attempt to explain it. The IBEX mission, due for launch in 2008, will add to the pool of observational data by directly detecting energetic neutral atoms generated within the heliosheath. Included are a number of papers which focus on IBEX, along with many other papers covering heliosheath related topics, such as particle acceleration, shock physics, turbulence, dust and comets. The heliosheath represents a very young research area, with currently only limited data and a dynamic array of theoretical models.