Heliosphere approximate shape scaled one in 7.5*10^14
This is an approximation of how it could look the heliosphere using MATLAB R2016a on the heliotail sky map of the mission IBEX from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. This map shows the relationship between the counts of low energetic neutral atoms over the high energetic neutral atoms, which is related to the speed of these atoms, and therefore, to the distance the Heliopause is to the Sun. The Heliopause is the surface where the solar wind particles interact with the interstellar medium. Everything inside this bubble is called the Heliosphere. The Voyager 1 and 2 probes have already crossed the Heliopause. This limit is oftenly considered the limit of the Solar System, although this definition is controversial, since there are objects outside this boundary that are still retained by Sun's gravity influence, like many TNOs that spend most of their orbits outside the Heliosphere, and the hypothetical Oort Cloud Objects, the source of long period comets. Since the Solar System is moving through the interstellar medium, it was always asumed that the Heliosphere has a comet-like shape, with its tail (named Heliotail) pointing to the opposite direction of the movement. However the data from the IBEX mission, along with Cassini probe, shows a quiet different shape, described as a four leaves clover.
Don't take this model as accurate, but as representative. The relationship between the speed of neutral atoms coming from the Heliopause and the distance to it may not be so linear, so for modeling this I used a exponential function for the radius in spheric coordinates. I smoothed it out several times, before and after plotting, so it doesn't look like a porcupine.
The center of the sphere in the image is the origin point, that is the position of the Sun, and the sphere's diameter is that of the orbit of Neptune, the most distant Solar System planet. This sphere was carved in the final model, so you can identify where the Sun is, and can be compared with the rest of the Solar System.
The model is scaled one in 1.5 * 1015, or about 10 Astronomical Unit (the distance betweem the Earth and the Sun) per mm; and one in 7.5 * 10 14, or about 5 AU per mm. Remember that the real size of the heliosphere is unknown, and I used as reference for its size the distance of the Voyager probes to the Sun at the time they crossed the Heliopause.
The file's names explained: name_1_x_10_y.stl is 1 : x * 10y. So _1_6_10_7 is 1:600000000 or one in 60 million.
Don't take this model as accurate, but as representative. The relationship between the speed of neutral atoms coming from the Heliopause and the distance to it may not be so linear, so for modeling this I used a exponential function for the radius in spheric coordinates. I smoothed it out several times, before and after plotting, so it doesn't look like a porcupine.
The center of the sphere in the image is the origin point, that is the position of the Sun, and the sphere's diameter is that of the orbit of Neptune, the most distant Solar System planet. This sphere was carved in the final model, so you can identify where the Sun is, and can be compared with the rest of the Solar System.
The model is scaled one in 1.5 * 1015, or about 10 Astronomical Unit (the distance betweem the Earth and the Sun) per mm; and one in 7.5 * 10 14, or about 5 AU per mm. Remember that the real size of the heliosphere is unknown, and I used as reference for its size the distance of the Voyager probes to the Sun at the time they crossed the Heliopause.
The file's names explained: name_1_x_10_y.stl is 1 : x * 10y. So _1_6_10_7 is 1:600000000 or one in 60 million.
References
- IBEX Heliotail Observations. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
- Surf to STL function for MATLAB
