SH41A-2372
Solar Cycle dependence of 5-55 keV Cassini/INCA energetic neutral atom (ENA) images of the Heliosheath and in situ Voyager/LECP ion measurements
Thursday, 17 December 2015
Poster Hall (Moscone South)
Stamatios M Krimigis1, Kostas Dialynas2, Donald G Mitchell3, Robert B Decker4 and Edmond C Roelof1, (1)Applied Physics Laboratory Johns Hopkins, Laurel, MD, United States, (2)Academy of Athens, Office for Space Research and Technology,, Athens, Greece, (3)JHU/APL, Laurel, MD, United States, (4)Applied Physics Laboratory Johns Hopkins, Space, Laurel, MD, United States
Abstract:
The heliosheath has been identified as the most probable source of ENAs that INCA detects but its variability due to solar activity throughout the solar cycle (SC) has not been resolved to date. We show all-sky, 5-55 keV ENA H maps from the year 2003 to 2014 and compare the solar cycle variation of the ENAs in both the heliospheric nose (upstream) and anti-nose (downstream) directions with the > 30 keV ions measured within the heliosheath by the Low Energy Charged Particle (LECP) detector on Voyagers 1, 2 (V1, V2) where we measure protons in overlapping energy bands ~30-55 keV. We find that a) Toward the anti-nose direction the ENA-H intensities decline during SC23, i.e. after 2003 ENA intensities decreased by ~ x2 at all energies by the end of year 2011, ~1 year after the observed minimum in solar activity; b) This ENA decrease (5.2-55 keV) during 2009-2011 is consistent with the concurrent intensity decrease of the > 30 keV ions (by a factor of 2-3) observed in situ by V1 and V2 in the heliosheath; c) Toward the nose direction, minimum intensities in both INCA ENAs and the V2 ions at E > 28 keV occur during the year 2013, with a subsequent recovery from 2014 to date (by a factor of ~2 in the > 35 keV ENA data). These quantitative correlations between the decreases of INCA ENAs (in both the heliospheric nose and anti-nose directions) and the in situ V1 and V2 ion measurements (separated by > 130 AU) during the declining phase of SC23, along with their concurrent jointly shared recoveries at the onset of SC24, imply that: 1) the 5-55 keV ENAs are produced in the heliosheath (because their transit times over 100 AU are less than a few months at energies > 40 keV), thus proving that our ENA observations can provide the ground truth for constructing comprehensive global heliosphere models; 2) the global heliosheath responds promptly (within ~1-1.5 yrs) to outward-propagating solar wind changes throughout the solar cycle.
