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Termination shock

node

The surface at which the solar wind, expanding supersonically from the Sun, is abruptly decelerated to subsonic speed against the pressure of the surrounding interstellar plasma. It is the first of the heliosphere's boundaries, not the last: beyond it lies the heliosheath, tens of AU thick, and only beyond that the heliopause. Voyager 1 crossed it on 16 December 2004 at about 94 AU. Voyager 2 crossed on 30 August 2007 at about 84 AU — ten AU closer to the Sun — and crossed it more than once, because the shock itself moves in and out as solar activity changes and it overtook the spacecraft repeatedly. The asymmetry between the two crossing distances was one of the first direct indications that the heliosphere is not a sphere. Not a place.

A node is not a place. Drawing it on a map would assert something about the world that no stored fact supports.

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Evidence · 2
Timeline

No dated observations are stored for this object. Atlas shows what was observed and when — it does not infer a history.

Connections · 2
Assembled narrative · 1

Assembled from 22 blocks · 2 evidence · 9 related

  1. Story
  2. The surface at which the solar wind, expanding supersonically from the Sun, is abruptly decelerated to subsonic speed against the pressure of the surrounding interstellar plasma. It is the first of the heliosphere's boundaries, not the last: beyond it lies the heliosheath, tens of AU thick, and only beyond that the heliopause. Voyager 1 crossed it on 16 December 2004 at about 94 AU. Voyager 2 crossed on 30 August 2007 at about 84 AU — ten AU closer to the Sun — and crossed it more than once, because the shock itself moves in and out as solar activity changes and it overtook the spacecraft repeatedly. The asymmetry between the two crossing distances was one of the first direct indications that the heliosphere is not a sphere. Not a place.
  3. Knowledge
  4. Solar wind
  5. Heliosphere
  6. Termination shock
  7. Connections
  8. Solar wind
  9. Heliosphere
  10. Voyager 1 crosses the termination shock at about 94 AU
  11. Voyager 2 crosses the termination shock at about 84 AU
  12. Heliosphere
  13. Termination shock
  14. Voyager 1 crosses the termination shock at about 94 AU
  15. Very local interstellar medium
  16. Solar wind
  17. Termination shock
  18. Heliopause
  19. Voyager 2 crosses the termination shock at about 84 AU
  20. Evidence
  21. Voyager 1 crossed the solar wind termination shock on 16 December 2004 at about 94 AU and entered the heliosheath. V55 verification basis: NOT CHECKED IN THIS RUN. The session's search budget was exhausted before this crossing could be searched and the publisher domain is blocked; the citation is given from standard mission record without page numbers precisely because they were not confirmed. A curator must verify the date, the distance and the citation before publication.
  22. Voyager 2 crossed the termination shock on 30 August 2007 at about 84 AU, roughly ten AU closer to the Sun than Voyager 1's crossing, indicating an asymmetric heliosphere; the shock was crossed more than once as it moved with solar activity. V55 verification basis: NOT CHECKED IN THIS RUN — search budget exhausted, publisher domain blocked. Date, distance and citation all require confirmation.
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Observed changes · 0

No public Signals are attached to this object. Signals show what changed and when it was observed — never a direction or a rank.

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/atlas?object=BOUNDARY_TERMINATION_SHOCK&experience=BOUNDARY_TERMINATION_SHOCK