Interstellar Dust Inside and Outside the Heliosphere
Final Report Abstract
In our work we have addressed the main questions from the proposal. The primary question about the origin of the directional shift has been answered (it can be explained by the interaction with the time-dependent interplanetary magnetic field). Improved mass distributions of the interstellar grains inside the heliosphere together with an improved gas-to-dust mass ratio in the Local Interstellar Cloud have been derived. However, the variations of the mass distribution and the measured flux over time cannot be explained satisfactorily in the current model. Possible candidates for reducing this discrepancy are time-dependent filtering at the heliospheric boundary and low bulk densities of the interstellar grains. The effects of both on the dust flow point in the right direction according to our estimates, but a thorough treatment of these new contributions is needed to get to a significantly improved model.
Publications
- (2011). ”Interstellar Dust Flow through the Solar System”. In Nosenko, V. Y., Shukla, P. K., Thoma, M. H., and Thomas, H. M., editors, American Institute of Physics Conference Series, volume 1397 of American Institute of Physics Conference Series, pages 385–386
Strub, P., Sterken, V.J., Krüger, H., Grün, E., Horanyi, M.
- (2013). ”The filtering of interstellar dust in the solar system”. Astronomy & Astrophysics, 552:A130
Sterken, V. J., Altobelli, N., Kempf, S., Krüger, H., Srama, R., Strub, P., Grün, E.
