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Variations in the solar wind stand‐off distance at Mercury
Author(s) -
Siscoe G.,
Christopher L.
Publication year - 1975
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/gl002i004p00158
Subject(s) - solar wind , magnetosphere , mercury (programming language) , magnetopause , physics , mercury's magnetic field , environmental science , meteorology , atmospheric sciences , coronal mass ejection , plasma , computer science , quantum mechanics , programming language
The intrinsic dipole model of the magnetosphere of Mercury is combined with statistics on the solar wind dynamic pressure from Explorers 33 and 35 to obtain histograms of the solar wind stand‐off distance for aphelion, perihelion and median distance of Mercury from the sun. The results show that even at perihelion the stand‐off distance lies above the surface the great majority of the time. On rare occasions, direct impact of the solar wind onto the surface will occur.