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Observed Properties of Solar Wind Jets inside 0.25 AU
- Publication Year :
- 2019
- Publisher :
- HAL CCSD, 2019.
-
Abstract
- Over the course of the first two orbits of Parker Solar Probe (PSP), the spacecraft has made solar wind and interplanetary magnetic field measurements inside 0.25 AU for the first time. Being this close to the Sun allows a view of the solar wind much closer to the source of its initial acceleration than has been previously observed. At this distance, smaller features have not yet interacted with the surrounding plasma, and are still clearly visible with in situ data. Observations from these first two orbits show an extraordinary number of transient features that appear as "jets" in the plasma data. These jets consist of temporally short (seconds to 10s of minutes) spikes in the solar wind speed that promptly return to the baseline wind speed. The velocity spikes are accompanied by "switchbacks" in the magnetic field, where the radial component of the magnetic field briefly changes sign and the electron strahl direction follows the field reversal. This study characterizes the statistical properties of these jets (e.g., sizes, durations, and flow directions) to develop a picture of the overall structure of the jets and to assess whether they may have a significant influence over the dynamics of solar wind in the inner heliosphere.
Details
- Language :
- English
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Accession number :
- edsair.od.......166..28577d0c5e742aba96e1c6824798b913