Interstellar Dust in the Solar System

Abstract

The Ulysses spacecraft has been orbiting the Sun on a highly inclined ellipse almost perpendicular to the ecliptic plane (inclination 79 deg, perihelion distance 1.3 AU, aphelion distance 5.4 AU) since it encountered Jupiter in 1992. The in-situ dust detector on board continuously measured interstellar dust grains with masses up to 10^-13 kg, penetrating deep into the solar system. The flow direction is close to the mean apex of the Sun's motion through the solar system and the grains act as tracers of the physical conditions in the local interstellar cloud (LIC). While Ulysses monitored the interstellar dust stream at high ecliptic latitudes between 3 and 5 AU, interstellar impactors were also measured with the in-situ dust detectors on board Cassini, Galileo and Helios, covering a heliocentric distance range between 0.3 and 3 AU in the ecliptic plane. The interstellar dust stream in the inner solar system is altered by the solar radiation pressure force, gravitational focussing and interaction of charged grains with the time varying interplanetary magnetic field. We review the results from in-situ interstellar dust measurements in the solar system and present Ulysses' latest interstellar dust data. These data indicate a 30 deg shift in the impact direction of interstellar grains w.r.t. the interstellar helium flow direction, the reason of which is presently unknown.

8 pages, 4 figures. Space Science Reviews, in press

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• Prediction of the In-Situ Dust Measurements of the Stardust Mission to Comet 81P/Wild 2
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Cited by in corpus (22)

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• Interstellar Dust Inside and Outside the Heliosphere
• Interstellar Dust in the Solar System
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• Perspectives on Interstellar Dust Inside and Outside of the Heliosphere
• 16 years of Ulysses Interstellar Dust Measurements in the Solar System: II. Fluctuations in the Dust Flow from the Data
• Three years of Ulysses dust data: 2005 to 2007
• Modeling the Infrared Interstellar Extinction
• The Dawn of Dust Astronomy
• Modelling DESTINY+ interplanetary and interstellar dust measurements en route to the active asteroid (3200) Phaethon
• Possible Interstellar meteoroids detected by the Canadian Meteor Orbit Radar
• Interstellar Dust in the Solar System: Model versus In-Situ Spacecraft Data
• Hyperbolic meteors: interstellar or generated locally via the gravitational slingshot effect?
• The Local Bubble and Interstellar Material Near the Sun
• Dust Formation By Failed Supernovae
• Models of dust around Europa and Ganymede
• Dense molecular cloud cores as a source of micrometer-sized grains in galaxies
• Alpha-Meteoroids then and now: Unearthing an overlooked micrometeoroid population
• Probing Oort Cloud and Local Interstellar Medium Properties via Dust Produced in Cometary Collisions
• Synergies between interstellar dust and heliospheric science with an Interstellar Probe
• Brilliant Pebbles: A Method for Detection of Very Large Interstellar Grains
• Collisional charging of dust particles by suprathermal particles. I -- Standard anisotropic Kappa distributions