Confirmed: Voyager 2 has reached interstellar space
05 NOVEMBER 2019
Researchers detect a tell-tale jump in plasma density.
Data from Voyager 2 has helped further characterise the structure of the heliosphere, the windsock-shaped region created by the Sun's wind as it extends to the boundary of the Solar System.
NASA JPL
Scientists have confirmed that Voyager 2 has entered the interstellar medium (ISM), the region of space outside the bubble-shaped boundary produced by wind streaming outward from the Sun.
This make it the second human-made object – after Voyager 1 in 2012 – to journey out of the Sun's influence.
In a paper in the journal Nature Astronomy, Don Gurnett and Bill Kurth, from the University of Iowa, US, report a definitive jump in plasma density detected by a plasma wave instrument on Voyager 2.
This, they say, is evidence of it journeying from the hot, lower-density plasma characteristic of the solar wind to the cool, higher-density plasma of interstellar space. A similar thing happened with Voyager 1.
More:
https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/voyager-2-headline
= new reply since forum marked as read
