A Special Session at the Spring AGU 2002 Devoted to the Heliosphere

The local interstellar medium (LISM) provides an accessible sample of present day galactic matter and determines the boundary of our heliosphere. The flow of neutral interstellar gas through the heliosphere and the interaction with the surrounding medium at the boundaries provide ample opportunity for not only in situ observations of particles and fields but also remote sensing observations using photons and energetic neutral atoms. The simultaneous availability of a variety of heliospheric data from spacecraft such as ACE, EUVE, IMAGE, SOHO, Ulysses, Voyager, and Wind over the past five to ten years has contributed to a rapidly growing understanding of the LISM and its influence on the heliosphere. At the same time, vastly improved heliospheric modeling provides a framework into which the observational pieces fit and exciting new mission and instrument concepts promise to answer some questions, but raise even more.

The time has come to synthesize results from myriad efforts designed to determine the physical parameters and the material composition of the LISM, its interaction with the Sun and solar wind through the formation of pickup ions and neutral solar wind, and the size, shape and character of the heliosphere and its boundary regions. We are inviting contributions on in situ and remote sensing observations of interstellar neutral atoms, interstellar pickup ion populations, their energetic products, neutral solar wind and other signs of LISM-heliosphere interaction as well as related modeling and new measurement techniques and missions.

Invited Speakers

Theme: What can we learn about the interstellar medium and its interaction with the heliosphere from the current multi-spacecraft data sets and advanced modeling.

Speakers:

Dr. George Gloeckler	Derivation of local interstellar medium parameters from pickup ion observations
Dr. Thomas E. Moore	The neutral interstellar medium and neutral solar wind observations with IMAGE
Dr. Hans Mueller	An overview of heliospheric modeling including filtering
Dr. John Vallerga	Solar UV backscattering observations of the neutral local interstellar medium

Thematic Half-Session A: Heliospheric Modeling-29 May 02, Wednesday

08:30-08:55		Mueller and Zank		An overview of global heliospheric modelling
08:55-09:10		McNutt, R.		Fluid modeling of the VLISM/solar wind interaction - 13 moments
09:10-09:25		Channok et al.		Velocity distribution of hydrogen atoms toward the solar apex
09:25-09:40		Richardson et al.		A simple concept for modeling cosmic ray mod. in inner heliosphere
09:40-09:55		Parhi et al.		Some attempts to improve theory of solar modulation of cosmic rays
09:55-10:15		BREAK		BREAK

Thematic Half-Session B: Heliospheric In-Situ Observations-29 May 02, Wednesday

10:15-10:40		Gloeckler and Geiss		Derivation of local ISM parameters from pickup ion obs
10:40-10:55		Hamilton et al.		Jovian v. Interstellar pickup ion source strengths from Cassini
10:55-11:10		Oka et al.		Torus distribution of interstellar helium pickup ions: Direct obs
11:10-11:25		Saul et al.		He+ is pickup ion aniso. & flux var. w/sw struct-SOHO/CTOF
11:25-11:40		Krimigis et al.		Low-energy oxygen ions observed at Voyagers 1 and 2
11:40-11:55		Cummings and Stone		The comp. of ACR and other heliospheric ions from Voyager obs
11:55-13:30		LUNCH		LUNCH

Thematic Half-Session C: Heliospheric Remote Sensing-29 May 02, Wednesday

13:30-13:55		Moore et al.		Interstellar atom and NSW obs from IMAGE
13:55-14:20		Vallerga, J.		Solar UV backscattering obs of the neutral local interstellar medium
14:20-14:35		Wood et al.		Diag pot of heliospheric and astropheric HI Ly alpha absorp det by HST
14:35-14:50		Raymond et al.		SOHO/UVCS obs of the HeI focusing cone near the sun

Poster Session Theme 1: Missions, Goals, Instruments and Techniques-28 May 02, Tuesday

01		Hsieh et al.		Studying the outer heliosphere from within via pickup ions and ENA
02		Liewer and Mewaldt		NASA's Interstellar probe mission
03		Cooper et al.		Heliospheric interactions with Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud comets
04		Livi et al.		Interstellar Pathfinder: A mission to explore the edge of the ISM
05		Wieser et al.		Test of a prototype for the direct meas. of the neutral interstellar gas
06		Keller et al.		New concept for ENA imaging using a gaseous charge exchange cell
07		Grun and Kruger		Galactic DUNE: Measurements of galactic dust near Earth

Note: Equipment requests should be made by each individual via a form that will be available at the AGU website shortly after the abstract deadline. Alternatively, one can contact Martez Taylor ( mtaylor@agu.org - 202-777-7332) who will fax a form.

Poster Session Theme 2: Heliospheric Structure and Properties-28 May 02, Tuesday

08		Wang and Richardson		Determination of the solar wind slowdown near solar maximum
09		Frisch and Slavin		Modeling the boundary conditions of the heliosphere
10		Roelof et al.		Search for heliospheric energetic neutral atoms using IMAGE/HENA
11		Collier et al.		Inner heliospheric gas and dust from solar wind charge exchange
12		Simpson et al.		Direct obs of interstellar neutral atoms from IMAGE
13		Wimmer and Bochsler		On the origin of inner source pickup ions
14		Hill et al.		Low-energy ACR obs of negative latitudinal grads during A>0
15		Kucharek et al.		Abundance variations of energetic He+ at 1 AU: ACE/SEPICA obs

Note: Equipment requests should be made by each individual via a form that will be available at the AGU website shortly after the abstract deadline. Alternatively, one can contact Martez Taylor ( mtaylor@agu.org - 202-777-7332) who will fax a form.

Conveners:

• Michael R. Collier, Code 692, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, 20771, ph: 301-286-5256, fax: 301-286-1648, e-mail: mcollier@pop600.gsfc.nasa.gov
• Eberhard Moebius, Space Science Center and Department of Physics, University of New Hampshire, Morse Hall, 39 College Road, Durham, NH 03824, ph: 603-862-3097, fax: 603-862-0311, e-mail: eberhard.moebius@unh.edu
• John Raymond, Solar and Stellar Physics Division, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden St., MS-15, Cambridge, MA 02138, ph: 617-495-7416, fax: 617-495-7049, e-mail: jraymond@cfa.harvard.edu
• Peter Wurz, Physics Institute, University of Bern, CH-3012, Bern, Switzerland, ph: ++41 31 631 44 26, fax: ++41 31 631 44 05, e-mail: peter.wurz@soho.unibe.ch

Additional Links (click on text):

• Spring AGU 2002 Special Sessions
• Abstract Submission
• The World Space Congress - 2002