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Voyager 2 enters interstellar space

Nature Astronomy volume 3, pages 963–964 (2019)Cite this article

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After 41 years of travel, the Voyager 2 spacecraft joins its twin in interstellar space. A suite of papers report Voyager 2’s experience of its transition through the heliosheath and heliopause to what lies beyond.

The plasmatic influence of the Sun extends beyond the heliopause. The heliosphere, as an obstacle to interstellar inflow, can perturb the very local interstellar medium, perhaps even forming an interstellar bow shock, or wave, upstream of the heliopause. Of course, the gravitational influence of the Sun also extends well beyond the heliopause — at least as far as the Oort cloud — but, for the purposes of heliophysics, the heliopause represents the outer-most solar structure.

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Fig. 1: The heliosphere and very local interstellar medium.

reproduced from ref. 2, Springer Nature Ltd

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  1. Center for Space Research, North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa

    R. Du Toit Strauss

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  1. R. Du Toit Strauss
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Correspondence to R. Du Toit Strauss.

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Strauss, R.D.T. Voyager 2 enters interstellar space. Nat Astron 3, 963–964 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-019-0942-5

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