Outer limits of solar system

General physics and astronomy discussions not directly related to Celestia
Avatar
Topic author
John Van Vliet
Posts: 2944
Joined: 28.08.2002
With us: 22 years 2 months

Re: Outer limits of solar system

Post #1by John Van Vliet » 28.06.2013, 19:47

--- edit----
Last edited by John Van Vliet on 18.10.2013, 11:14, edited 1 time in total.

chornedsnorkack
Posts: 13
Joined: 19.03.2013
With us: 11 years 7 months

Re: Outer limits of solar system

Post #2by chornedsnorkack » 30.06.2013, 11:31

argelesmer wrote:Yes the sun moves across the Milky Way, but all the stars move and
we never observed this phenomena around nearby stars ...
what does that lead scientists to believe that the sun is different ?

The heliosphere is hard to observe because it is a tenuous and dim objects. We do not observe the winds of most nearby stars because they are weak and dim to begin with, like that of Sun, and they are so dim at the interstellar distances that they are too dim to observe at all. There are some exceptions, like Mira Ceti, whose powerful outflows were recently found to have left a huge tail.

If Sun were stationary relative to interstellar gas, then Sun would indeed be continuously blowing up a perpetually expanding bubble.

However, if interstellar gas flowed relative to Sun then the flow would blow away the solar wind as it expands and weakens.

The current observations suggest that interstellar gas does move relative to Sun, and blows away heliosphere. However, a recent observational surprise was absence of bow shock - it seems that the speed of Sun relative to interstellar gas is slower than speed of sound in interstellar gas.

VikingTechJPL
Posts: 105
Joined: 04.03.2010
With us: 14 years 8 months

Re: Outer limits of solar system

Post #3by VikingTechJPL » 11.07.2013, 19:37

1.6.1, Dell Studio XPS, AMD 2.7 GHz, 8 GB RAM, Win 7 64-bit, ATI Radeon HD 5670
1.6.0, Dell Inspiron 1720, Intel Core Duo 2 Ghz, 3 GB RAM, Win Vista, NVIDIA GeForce 8600M G/GT
1.4.1, Dell Dimension 4700, Pent-4 2.8 GHz, 512 MB RAM, Win XP SP2, Radeon X300

Celestial_Planets
Posts: 78
Joined: 11.10.2006
With us: 18 years 1 month

Re: Outer limits of solar system

Post #4by Celestial_Planets » 21.07.2013, 20:22

Did you know that our solar system has a tail?
My First Computer:

448 MB of RAM
Speed: 2,540 ft/s
71.2 GB Space
Celestia 1.4.1
Windows XP Service Pack 2

My Current Computer:

16 GB RAM
Speed: 98,500 mi/s
iMac 21.5"
Mac OS X Lion
500 GB HD
Celestia 1.6.1

Greetings from the Celestia Universe

Celestial_Planets
Posts: 78
Joined: 11.10.2006
With us: 18 years 1 month

Re: Outer limits of solar system

Post #5by Celestial_Planets » 22.07.2013, 20:04

My First Computer:

448 MB of RAM
Speed: 2,540 ft/s
71.2 GB Space
Celestia 1.4.1
Windows XP Service Pack 2

My Current Computer:

16 GB RAM
Speed: 98,500 mi/s
iMac 21.5"
Mac OS X Lion
500 GB HD
Celestia 1.6.1

Greetings from the Celestia Universe

Celestial_Planets
Posts: 78
Joined: 11.10.2006
With us: 18 years 1 month

Re: Outer limits of solar system

Post #6by Celestial_Planets » 22.07.2013, 20:05

lodgy wrote:
Celestial_Planets wrote:Did you know that our solar system has a tail?

Excellent question !!! :)

It is an excellent question indeed, lodgy.
My First Computer:

448 MB of RAM
Speed: 2,540 ft/s
71.2 GB Space
Celestia 1.4.1
Windows XP Service Pack 2

My Current Computer:

16 GB RAM
Speed: 98,500 mi/s
iMac 21.5"
Mac OS X Lion
500 GB HD
Celestia 1.6.1

Greetings from the Celestia Universe


Return to “Physics and Astronomy”