Four years of Ulysses dust data: 1996 to 1999

Abstract

The Ulysses spacecraft is orbiting the Sun on a highly inclined ellipse ($i=79^{\circ }$, perihelion distance 1.3 AU, aphelion distance 5.4 AU). Between January 1996 and December 1999 the spacecraft was beyond 3 AU from the Sun and crossed the ecliptic plane at aphelion in May 1998. In this four-year period 218 dust impacts were recorded with the dust detector on board. We publish and analyse the complete data set of both raw and reduced data for particles with masses $10^{-16}\mathrm{g}$ to $10^{-8}$ g. Together with 1477 dust impacts recorded between launch of Ulysses and the end of 1995 published earlier \cite{gruen1995c,krueger1999b}, a data set of 1695 dust impacts detected with the Ulysses sensor between October 1990 and December 1999 is now available. The impact rate measured between 1996 and 1999 was relatively constant with about 0.2 impacts per day. The impact direction of the majority of the impacts is compatible with particles of interstellar origin, the rest are most likely interplanetary particles. The observed impact rate is compared with a model for the flux of interstellar dust particles. The flux of particles several micrometers in size is compared with the measurements of the dust instruments on board Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 beyond 3 AU (Humes 1980, JGR, 85, 5841--5852, 1980). Between 3 and 5 AU, Pioneer results predict that Ulysses should have seen five times more ($\sim 10\mu \mathrm{m}$ sized) particles than actually detected.

accepted by Planetary and Space Science, 22 pages, 8 figures (1 colour figure)

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• Dust in the Local Interstellar Wind
• Aspects of the Mass Distribution of Interstellar Dust Grains in the Solar System from In-Situ Measurements
• Interstellar Dust Inside and Outside the Heliosphere
• Modeling the Motion and Distribution of Interstellar Dust inside the Heliosphere
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• Interstellar Dust Inside and Outside the Heliosphere
• 16 Years of Ulysses Interstellar Dust Measurements in the Solar System: I. Mass Distribution and Gas-to-Dust Mass Ratio
• The Dynamics of Charged Dust in Magnetized Molecular Clouds
• 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
• Some Stars are Totally Metal: A New Mechanism Driving Dust Across Star-Forming Clouds, and Consequences for Planets, Stars, and Galaxies
• One year of Galileo dust data from the Jovian system: 1996
• Interstellar Extinction
• Galileo dust data from the jovian system: 2000 to 2003
• Spatial Variations of the Extinction Law in the Galactic Disk from Infrared Observations
• Dust-Evacuated Zones Near Massive Stars: Consequences of Dust Dynamics on Star-forming Regions