NEWS

“Space Probes Show Solar System Dented, Not Round”, (The New York Times, July 2008)
“When viewed from the rest of the galaxy, the edge of our solar system appears slightly dented as if a
giant hand is pushing one edge of it inward, far-traveling NASA probes reveal.”

Top Ten Space Pictures of 2007 (National Geographic Dec 2007)

“A research team led by Merav Opher at Virginia's George Mason University found that, just outside the solar system, this interstellar magnetic field is inclined at a 60-degree angle relative to the plane of the Milky Way.
The solar system takes on its streamlined shape as it strikes the magnetic field at this angle, Opher explained.
"The shape of the solar system, this bullet, is really shaped by what lies ahead of us—the interstellar magnetic field," Opher said”

Voyager  2 Multimedia for the 2007 AGU Press Event (Dec 2007)

See Video material of Opher et al. work showing the distortion

ABC News "Solar System and Milky Way doing the splits" (June 2007)

 Discover Magazine, "The Sun Flies Like a Bullet" (August 2007)

“Our solar system, which careers around our galaxy’s center at nearly half a million miles per hour, isn’t round. It isn’t even symmetrical. Instead, says George Mason University astrophysicist Merav Opher, the sun’s domain is shaped like a slightly squashed bullet and tilts up to 90 degrees away from the plane of the magnetic field of the rest of the Milky Way.

Opher got her results by working with particle and radio-wave data from the two Voyager probes, which are now more than 100 times as far from Earth as we are from the sun, near a boundary known as the termination shock. There, the barrage of particles blasting out from the sun—the solar wind—is slowed by our motion through the galaxy. Using the Voyager data, researchers can now monitor the magnetic field at the edge of our solar system. “Even though the local interstellar field is kind of weak, it really distorts the shape of our solar system,” Opher says. “Because of our motion through the galaxy, we have a bullet shape, like a boat going through the ocean. But the magnetic field takes our bullet shape and tilts it. This is a huge effect; we’re really inclined.”

National Geographic "Solar System is "Buller Shaped" May 10 (May 2007)

Discovery News ""Solar System Angling from Milky Way", May 11 (2007)

New Scientist "The Kink at the edge of the solar system" (May 2006)
 “THE outer boundary of the solar system is distorted as though it has been punched from below. The evidence comes from NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft, which is about to cross the inner boundary even though it is closer to the sun than its twin spacecraft was when it crossed in 2004.

The Voyager craft have been racing out of the solar system for 30 years. "They're a pair of old fridges out there," says astrophysicist Merav Opher from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, who has used the data to simulate the shape of the heliosphere, the huge magnetic bubble that contains the solar system, the solar wind and the sun's magnetic field.”

CNN.com "Voyager 2 detects solar system's edge" (May 2006)

Nashua Telegraph "Unlikely scientist delves deep into space at UNH" (June 2006)

Ulisse.sissa.it "The heliosphere is not a perfect sphere" (May 2006)

To an Instability and Beyond - Science Editor's Choice, Science Vol 300, page 2005 (2003)

Did Voyager Crossed the Termination Shock? NASA Space Science Update (November 05, 2003)
(part of the panel, with Prof. Ed Stone, Dr. Tom Krimigis and Dr. Frank McDonald) (video in Real Player format)

LATimes article on Voyager (Nov 06, 2003)