EPSS Colloquium fall-2015

The Sun produces a million mile per hour wind of hot ionized gas that flows out all directions in space all of the time. This solar wind interacts with the planets and other objects in the solar system and, at Earth, produces both beautiful aurora and dangerous space weather that can kill orbiting satellites. Further out, the solar wind inflates a bubble in the local interstellar medium that helps protect the entire solar system from dangerous galactic cosmic radiation. Over the past decade our knowledge of the outer reaches of this bubble – our heliosphere – have grown immeasurably with both direct sampling by the two Voyager spacecraft in these distant reaches and the first remote imaging of the global interaction by the Interstellar Boundary Explorer – IBEX. This talk tells their story. More information here