IBEX media kit:
> Press Release
> Feature story
> Presenters biographies and photos
Presenters Multimedia:
Presenter 1: Eric Christian, Program Scientist (Biography)
1) Voyager: Journey to the Heliopause
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Animation above: This animation starts at our sun and quickly zooms out from the solar system to reveal the heliosphere and its collision with interstellar gas. The two Voyager spacecraft are currently exploring this interaction region. Credit: Walt Feimer/NASA GSFC
2) Sky-map with 2 Voyagers
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Animation above: Shows the entire night sky flattened out to show the type of projection IBEX uses, and then fades to show the locations of the two Voyager spacecraft. Credit: NASA GSFC
Presenter 2: Dave McComas, Principal Investigator (Biography)
3) Voyager data vs. IBEX data
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Animation above: Voyagers 1 and 2 reached the termination shock in 2005 and 2007, respectively, taking point measurements as they left the solar system. Before IBEX, there was only data from these two points at the edge of the solar system. While exciting and valuable, the data they provided about this region raised more questions than they resolved. IBEX has filled in the entire interaction region, revealing surprising details completely unpredicted by any theories. IBEX completes one all-sky map every six months. IBEX completed the first map of the complex interactions occurring at the edge of the solar system (shown) this summer. Credit: SwRI
4) IBEX in Space
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Animation above: The IBEX spacecraft spins in its orbit in space. Credit: Walt Feimer/NASA GSFC
5) Formation of Energetic Neutral Atoms
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Animation above: This animation shows how Energetic Neutral Atoms are made in the heliosheath when hot solar wind protons grab an electron from a cold interstellar gas atom. The ENAs can then easily travel back into the solar system, where some are collected by IBEX. Credit: Walt Feimer/NASA GSFC
6) How IBEX Maps the Edge of the Heliosphere
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Animation above: With every spin of the spacecraft, IBEX maps out a strip of the sky, repeatedly imaging the same strip for an entire orbit. Once each orbit, IBEX is reoriented to point at the Sun, which moves the observations to a new strip. Over a six-month period, the entire sky get covered. Credit: SwRI
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Animation above: As IBEX orbits, it builds on the crescent shape captured by its rotation until it completes the all-sky map in about six-months. These maps will reveal the structures, dynamics, energetic particle acceleration, and charged particle propagation in this very complex but important region. Credit: SwRI
7) IBEX Sky Map
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Animation above: This animation portrays how the entire sky is flattened to the 2-dimensional maps that IBEX presents. Credit: NASA GSFC
8) Ribbon Feature
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Animation above: IBEX simultaneously makes a total of fourteen maps at different energies. This movie shows several different maps, with the surprising bright ribbon visible in each of them. Credit: SwRI
9) IBEX-Hi AND IBEX-Lo Correlation
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Image above: IBEX has two independent sensors, and this still shows that they are seeing a very similar structure. Credit: SwRI
10) Ribbon Feature (#2)
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Image above: Accurate timing of the incoming ENAs allows the IBEX team to obtain a higher resolution in the latitudinal direction. This shows some of the fine detail of the ribbon in the blow-up section. Credit: SwRI
11) First Observation of Interstellar Neutral H and O
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Image above: An auxiliary measurement made by IBEX is the detection of the interstellar gas that flows directly into the solar system. This shows the first observation of interstellar hydrogen and oxygen gas. Credit: SwRI
12) What Does It All Mean?
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Image above: Illustrates one of the possibilities for the bright ribbon of emission seen in the IBEX ENA maps. The galactic magnetic field shapes the heliosphere as it drapes over it. The ribbon appears to trace the area where the magnetic field is most parallel to the surface of the heliosphere (the heliopause). Credit: SwRI
Presenter 3: Rosine Lallement (Biography)
13) Galaxy Zoom
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Animation above: This animation zooms in from a view of the Milky Way Galaxy to our heliosphere. It sets the scale for our home in the galaxy. Credit: Walt Feimer/NASA GSFC
14) Astrospheres
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Image above: This image shows photographs of the heliospheres around other stars (called astrospheres) taken by a variety of telescopes. Credit: SwRI
Presenter 4: Lindsay Bartolone, Education and Public Outreach (E/PO) (Biography)
15) The Sun's movement through the Galaxy
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Animation above: Just like all other stars in the galaxy's flattened disk, the Sun slowly orbits the center of the galaxy like a horse on a merry-go-round, taking about 250 million years to go around once, gently bobbing up and down through the disk. As the Solar system travels through different parts of the Milky Way, the heliosphere's shape and size keep changing. The heliosphere protects us like a cocoon as the Sun and its planets travel through the Milky Way. Credit: Adler Planetarium/Chicago
16) Cosmic Ray Shielding
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Image above: This graph depicts the fraction of high energy cosmic rays (greater than 100 MeV) that pass through the boundary of the solar system. 100% of them are present outside of the Bow Shock. There is a small dropoff in the number that make it through to the heliopause. More than 50% are stopped between the heliopause and termination shock, which is at approximately 100 AU. This leaves a fraction less than 25% to permeate to the inner solar system. Credit: Adler Planetarium/Chicago
Presenter 5: Don Mitchell, Cassini Spacecraft Instrument Scientist (Biography)
17)
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Image above: Artist's concept of the heliosphere, showing the relationship between the Voyager spacecraft (outside the Termination Shock, faint blue shell) and the Cassini spacecraft at Saturn. The blow-up of the Saturn system shows the Cassini spacecraft, which carries the Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument (MIMI) Ion and Neutral Camera (INCA). INCA produced heliospheric images in energetic neutral atom emission from Saturn at 10 astronomical units (AU) from the sun, still deep inside the heliosphere. The Earth is at 1 AU, and the Voyagers are now beyond 100 AU. Together, the Voyagers measure the energetic particles at two discrete locations in this vast system, while Cassini/INCA provides global images of the system (from the inside). Credit: NASA and JHU/APL
18)
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Image above: Full sky image of the energetic neutral atom emission from the sheath of hot particles formed in the region where the solar wind collides with the interstellar medium (the heliosheath). The image is shown in a similar coordinate system to that used to display the just-released data from the IBEX mission. The two instruments, one near Earth and the other orbiting Saturn, see similar images, even though the data from the Cassini instrument is at somewhat higher energy than that from the IBEX instrument. Credit: Cassini/MIMI-INCA
19)
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Image above: Full sky image of the energetic neutral atom emission from the sheath of hot particles formed in the region where the solar wind collides with the interstellar medium (the heliosheath). The data are shown in galactic coordinates. The emissions are weak in the vicinity of the galactic poles, which suggests that the interstellar magnetic field is strongly influencing the distribution of the hot charged particles in the heliosheath. Credit: Cassini/MIMI-INCA
Presenter 6: Dave McComas, Principal Investigator (Biography)
20) Bringing it all together
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Image above: Combines one of the possibilities for the bright ribbon of emission seen in the IBEX ENA maps with an image of the IBEX spacecraft. The galactic magnetic field shapes the heliosphere as it drapes over it. The ribbon appears to trace the area where the magnetic field is most parallel to the surface of the heliosphere (the heliopause). Credit: SwRI