Credit: NASA

The Wigner Space team studies the Sun and the heliosphere focusing on their plasma processes and their effects on the planetary, cometary or spacecraft plasma environments.

The solar wind propagation throughout the inner heliosphere is studied by a multi-spacecraft and multi-model approach financed by OTKA grant FK128548 and lead by Andrea Opitz. We improve our methods through detailed study of CIRs (Gergely Kobán). Our propagation tools were extended to 3D and we have nice visualizations now (Anikó Timár).

Considering the Solar Orbiter mission (2020-) our team is Co-Investigator in the SolO MAG magnetometer. Currently, we study directional discontinuities (Ákos Madár) and solar wind radial propagation (Nikolett Biró).

Previous research of our team includes the magnetic flux in the solar wind (Géza Erdős) from Ulysses observations, and the solar wind structures from STEREO measurements (Opitz et al. 2009), Venus Express and Messenger observations (Dosa and Erdos 2017).

The outer heliosphere is intensively studied by the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft that have passed the heliopause in 2012 and 2018, respectively.

Selected publications

• Koban G., Opitz A., Biro N., Nemeth Z., Orientation of the stream interface of CIRs, Journal of Space Weather and Space Climate 13, 14 (2023)
• Zeldovich, M. A., Kecskeméty, K., Logachev, Yu I., Suprathermal ions from coronal holes at 1 au in solar cycles 23 and 24: dependence of ion abundances on solar wind speed, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 502, Issue 2, 2961-2969, DOI:10.1093/mnras/staa4029, 2021
• Horbury T. et al. (including Erdos G.), The Solar Orbiter magnetometer, Astronomy & Astrophysics 642, paper A9 (2020)
• Zeldovich, M.A., Logachev, Y.I., Kecskeméty, K., Quiet-time 0.04-2 MeV/nucleon Ions at 1 AU in Solar Cycles 23 and 24, Solar Phys. 293, Issue 1, article id. 3, 21 pp, DOI 10.1007/s11207-017-1170-8, 2018
• Dósa, M., Erdős, G., Long-term Longitudinal Recurrences of the Open Magnetic Flux Density in the Heliosphere, Astrophysical Journal 838, 104, 2017
• Erdős, G., Balogh, A., Magnetic flux density in the heliosphere through several solar cycles, Astrophysical Journal 781, 50, 12 p., 2014
• Erdős, G., Balogh, A., Magnetic flux density measured in fast and slow solar wind streams, Astrophysical Journal 753, 130, 2012
• Erdős, G., Balogh, A., North-south asymmetry of the location of the heliospheric current sheet revisited JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH 115 Paper: A01105 , 8 p, 2010

Last updated on Feb 29th, 2024.