Three years of Ulysses dust data: 2005 to 2007

TL;DR

This paper reports on three years of Ulysses spacecraft dust data, analyzing impact rates, directions, and variations of interstellar and interplanetary dust over different solar cycle phases.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of dust impact data from 2005-2007, including interstellar dust flow direction shifts and comparison with earlier data periods.

Findings

Impact rate varied from 0.3 to 1.5 impacts per day.

Interstellar dust impact direction shifted by ~30 degrees.

Dust flux data agrees with existing interplanetary flux models.

Abstract

The Ulysses spacecraft has been orbiting the Sun on a highly inclined ellipse since it encountered Jupiter in February 1992. Since then it made almost three revolutions about the Sun. Here we report on the final three years of data taken by the on-board dust detector. During this time, the dust detector recorded 609 dust impacts of particles with masses 10^-16 g <= m <= 10^-7 g, bringing the mission total to 6719 dust data sets. The impact rate varied from a low value of 0.3 per day at high ecliptic latitudes to 1.5 per day in the inner solar system. The impact direction of the majority of impacts between 2005 and 2007 is compatible with particles of interstellar origin, the rest are most likely interplanetary particles. We compare the interstellar dust measurements from 2005/2006 with the data obtained during earlier periods (1993/1994) and (1999/2000) when Ulysses was traversing the same spatial region at southern ecliptic latitudes but the solar cycle was at a different phase. During these three intervals the impact rate of interstellar grains varied by more than a factor of two. Furthermore, in the two earlier periods the grain impact direction was in agreement with the flow direction of the interstellar helium while in 2005/2006 we observed a shift in the approach direction of the grains by approximately 30 deg away from the ecliptic plane. The reason for this shift remains unclear but may be connected with the configuration of the interplanetary magnetic field during solar maximum. We also find that the dust measurements are in agreement with the interplanetary flux model of Staubach et al. (1997) which was developed to fit a 5-year span of Ulysses data.