Connecting Sun And Heliosphere

Contributors examine the physics of wind origin and physical phenomena in winds, including heliospheric shocks, magnetohydrodynamic turbulence, and kinetic phenomena--and their interactions with surrounding media. Contributions range from studies of the interstellar cloud surrounding the solar system to solar wind interaction with comets.

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, that of a nearly polar orbit around the Sun. Ulysses’ results affect our understanding of the heliosphere from the interior of the Sun to the interstellar medium - beyond the outer boundary of the heliosphere. Written by scientists closely associated with the Ulysses mission, the book describes and explains the many different aspects of changes in the heliosphere in response to solar activity. In particular, the authors describe the rise in solar activity from the last minimum in solar activity in 1996 to its maximum in 2000 and the subsequent decline in activity.

The 19th ESLAB Symposium on 'The Sun and the Heliosphere in Three Dimensions' was held in Les Diablerets (Switzerland) on 4-6 June 1985. Organised almost exactly ten years after the Goddard Space Fl i ght Center Sympos i um dea 1 i ng with the Sun and the i nterp 1 anetary medium in three dimensions, the aim of this Symposium was not only to review the progress made in understanding the three-dimensional structure and dynamics of the heliosphere, but also to look ahead to the scientific return to be expected from the Ulysses mission. Scheduled for launch in May 1986, the scientific instrumentation on board Ulysses will shed light on the conditions and processes occurring away from the ecliptic plane, thereby adding literally a new dimension to our understanding of the only stellar plasmasphere to which we have direct access. The scientific programme of the Symposium was built around a series of invited review papers dealing with aspects of the corona and its influence on the interplanetary medium via transient ejecta, the solar wind, energetic solar particles and galactic cosmic rays, interplanetary dust and neutral gas. These invited talks were supplemented by a number of contributed and poster papers. With the exception of three contributed talks and Wibberenz' review of coronal and acceleration of energetic particles, all papers propagation presented at the Symposium are included in this volume.

In 2010, NASA and the National Science Foundation asked the National Research Council to assemble a committee of experts to develop an integrated national strategy that would guide agency investments in solar and space physics for the years 2013-2022. That strategy, the result of nearly 2 years of effort by the survey committee, which worked with more than 100 scientists and engineers on eight supporting study panels, is presented in the 2013 publication, Solar and Space Physics: A Science for a Technological Society. This booklet, designed to be accessible to a broader audience of policymakers and the interested public, summarizes the content of that report.

This volume represents the state of the art of the science covered by the International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy (IAGA) Division IV: Solar Wind and Interplanetary Field. It contains a collection of contributions by top experts addressing and reviewing a variety of topics included under the umbrella of the division. It covers subjects that extend from the interior of the Sun to the heliopause, and from the study of physical processes in the Sun and the solar wind plasma to space weather forecasts. The book is organized in 6 parts: the solar interior, the solar atmosphere, the heliosphere, heliophysical processes, radio emissions, and coordinated science in the Sun-Earth system. In addition, we highlight some of the results presented during the IAGA Division IV symposia in the 11th Scientific Assembly of IAGA in Sopron, Hungary, on 23-30 August 2009, which was planned simultaneously with this book.

" ... Concise explanations and descriptions - easily read and readily understood - of what we know of the chain of events and processes that connect the Sun to the Earth, with special emphasis on space weather and Sun-Climate."--Dear Reader.