Does the Interstellar Bow Shock exist around the Heliosphere?

Does the Interstellar Bow Shock exist around the Heliosphere?

Does the Interstellar Bow Shock exist around the Heliosphere?
Ratkiewicz, R.1,2 , Kotlarz J.1
1
Institute of Aviation, al. Krakowska 110/114, 02-256 Warszawa, Poland
2
Space Research Center PAS, ul. Bartycka 18A, 00-716 Warszawa, Poland
The LISM velocity vector and temperature originally determined through the velocity and temperature of the interstellar He flowing in the inner heliosphere and measured by the GAS instrument on Ulysses (Witte et al. 2004, Witte
2004, Moebius et al. 2004), recently have been challenged by new measurements of the He flow by the Interstellar
Boundary Explorer (IBEX). Based on the IBEX data McComas et al. (2012a,b) concluded that the bow shock (BS)
in front of the heliosphere does not exist. This result is, however, based on the LISM proton density, neglecting the
contribution of the Helium ions. The influence of the He+ was discussed by Scherer & Fichtner (2014) and these
authors showed, that a weak bow shock should exist. Another possibility is a bow wave (Zank et al. 2013) or a slow
bow shock (Zieger etal. 2013). Independently other recent work by Ben-Jaffel & Ratkiewicz (2012), Ben-Jaffel et al.
(2013), Wood et al. (2015), and Leonard et al. (2015) show that the scenario of even a fast bow shock in front of
the heliosphere remains valid. The above indicates that the heliosphere-interstellar medium interaction is far more
complex than previously appreciated (McComas et al. 2015) and still requires thorough investigations.
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