P31E-2097
Solar Wind Interaction with Comet 67P/C-G: Impact of Corotating Interaction Regions
Wednesday, 16 December 2015
Poster Hall (Moscone South)
Niklas J. T. Edberg1, Anders I Eriksson1, Elias Odelstad1, Erik Vigren1, James L Burch2, Chris Carr3, Emanuele Cupido4, Karl-Heinz Glassmeier5, Raymond Goldstein2, Jasper S Halekas6, Henri Pierre7, Jean-Pierre Lebreton8, Kathleen Mandt2, Prachet Mokashi9, Zoltan Nemeth10, Hans Nilsson11, Robin Ramstad11, Ingo Richter5 and Gabriella Stenberg Wieser11, (1)IRF Swedish Institute of Space Physics Uppsala, Uppsala, Sweden, (2)Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX, United States, (3)Imperial College, London, United Kingdom, London, United Kingdom, (4)Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom, (5)Technical University of Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany, (6)University of Iowa, Physics and Astronomy, Iowa City, IA, United States, (7)Laboratoire de Physique et Chimie de l’Environnement et de l’Espace, Orleans, France, (8)University of Orleans, Orleans, France, (9)Southwest Research Institute San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, United States, (10)Wigner Research Center for Physics, Budapest, Hungary, (11)IRF Swedish Institute of Space Physics Kiruna, Kiruna, Sweden
Abstract:
We present observations from the Rosetta Plasma Consortium (RPC) of impacts of corotating interaction regions (CIRs) on comet 67P. Corotating interaction regions build up in the solar wind when slow flow is caught up by faster flow. A pressure pulse is then formed, which propagates outward in interplanetary space and impacts on e.g. planets, moons and comet in its path. In the interval October to December 2014 four such CIRs are traced from Earth (using ACE) to Mars (using Mars Express and MAVEN) and to comet 67P (using Rosetta). As the CIRs impact on the cometary coma the ionospheric low-energy plasma density in the ionosphere increases by roughly one order of magnitude in the first three events. The increased density is possibly caused by sweeping up of more upstream plasma in combination with increased impact ionization and charge exchange processes. Increased fluxes of ~100 eV electrons are observed concurrently and the magnetic field strength typically doubles as more interplanetary magnetic field piles up around of the comet.
