Heliosphere

Vibhav Mishra * Sanjay Pandey * Pawan Tiwari * Avnish Kushwaha * Om Prakash Tiwari
B.Sc 4th Sem

Govt. Science College Rewa (M.P.)

The heliosphere is a region of space dominated by Earth's Sun, a sort of bubble of charged particles in the space surrounding the Solar System, "blown" into the interstellar medium (the hydrogen and helium gas that permeates the galaxy) by the solar wind. Although electrically neutral atoms from interstellar volume can penetrate this bubble, virtually all of the material in the heliosphere emanates from the Sun itself. The Sun's Corona is so hot that particles reach escape velocity, streaming outwards at 300 to 800 km/s For the first ten billion kilometers of its radius the solar wind travels at over 1,000,000 km/h. As it begins to interact with the interstellar medium, it slows down before finally ceasing altogether. The point where the solar wind begins to slow is called the termination shock; then the solar wind continues to slow as it passes through the heliosheath leading to a boundary where the interstellar medium and solar wind pressures balance called the heliopause. The termination shock was successfully detected by both Voyager 1 in 2004, and Voyager 2 in 2007.

Magnetosphere
Vibhav Mishra * Sanjay Pandey * Pawan Tiwari * Avnish Kushwaha * Om Prakash Tiwari

Govt. Science College Rewa

A magnetosphere is the area of space near an astronomical object in which charged particles are controlled by that object's magnetic field.[1][2] Near the surface of the object, the magnetic field lines resemble those of an ideal magnetic dipole. Farther away from the surface, the field lines are significantly distorted by external currents, such as the solar wind.[3][4] When speaking about the Earth, magnetosphere is typically used to refer to the outer layer of the ionosphere,[3] although some sources consider the ionosphere and magnetosphere to be separate.

History
Study of the Earth's magnetosphere began in 1600, when William Gilbert discovered that the magnetic field on the surface of the earth was similar to that on a terrella, a small, magnetized sphere. In the 1940s, Walter M. Elsasser proposed the model of dynamo theory, which attributes the Earth's magnetic field to the motion of the Earth's iron outer core. Through the use of magnetometers, scientists were able to study the variations in the Earth's magnetic field as functions of both time and latitude and longitude. Beginning in the late 1940s, rockets were used to study cosmic rays. In 1958, Explorer 1, the first of the Explorer series of space missions, was launched to study the intensity of cosmic rays above the atmosphere and measure the fluctuations in this activity. This mission observed the existence of the Van Allen radiation belt (located in the inner region of the Earth's magnetosphere), with the Explorer 3 mission later that year definitively proving its existence. Also in 1958, Eugene Parker proposed the idea of the solar wind. In 1959, the term magnetosphere was proposed by Thomas Gold. The Explorer 12 mission in 1961 led to the observation by Cahill and Amazeen in 1963 of a sudden decrease in the strength of the magnetic field near the noon meridian, later named the magnetopause. In 1983, the International Cometary Explorer observed the magnetotail, or the distant magnetic field.[4]