IBEX Ribbon
The IBEX ribbon is a narrow, arc-shaped structure of enhanced energetic neutral atom (ENA) emissions discovered by NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission in 2009. The ribbon is a significant feature at the boundary of the heliosphere, the region of space dominated by the Sun’s influence. Discovery The IBEX spacecraft, launched in 2008, was designed to map the flux of ENAs originating from the heliosphere’s boundary. In its first all-sky map, IBEX detected an unexpected, bright, and narrow structure of ENA emissions, now known as the IBEX ribbon. This feature was not predicted by prior models and indicated a complex interaction between the solar wind and the local interstellar magnetic field. Origin theories Multiple hypotheses have been proposed to explain the IBEX ribbon. The first hypothesis, proposed by David J. McComas, McComas et al. (2009) and Schwadron et al. (2009), suggests that the ribbon forms through a chain of charge-exchange processes. In this ...
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