The image and a 1.2 Mbyte *.avi
or a 0.7 Mbyte quicktime video presentation
is a view of inner heliospheric plasma density (to 1.5 times
the distance of the Earth from the Sun) derived from a combination of
Thomson scattering intensities from the HELIOS photometers and IPS velocity data.
The data from the HELIOS photometers were obtained from March 21, 1977 to April 18, 1977
(Carrington Rotation 1653). The IPS velocities were obtained from the UCSD IPS array
from February 24, 1977 to May 15, 1977 (Carrington Rotations 1652 - 54).
The plasma density is normalized by the removal of a 1/r squared distance dependence.
The Sun is depicted as a sphere in the center of the figure, and the Earth, a blue sphere
on it's orbit around the Sun. The view is from 15 degrees above the heliographic
equator.
The image is obtained from a three-dimensional tomographic
reconstruction of the plasma from perspective views of it available from
outward motion of the plasma and solar rotation as explained in part by
Jackson et al., 1997. The intensity level observed by the photometers is
a least-squares fit to a hydrodynamic model over the time period observed.
Because of this limitation, only the corotating component of
the heliospheric plasma density and velocity can be reconstructed from the data.
Clearly seen is the three-dimensional Archimedean spiral structure of the
dense heliospheric components of the solar wind during this solar minimum
period when the heliospheric current sheet was nearly parallel to the equator.
There is a
1.2 Mbyte *.avi perspective view video of this data set from Earth.
There is also a
2.9 Mbyte *.avi
video depiction of a FIRE (Solar Probe) fly-through of this data set.
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