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First Images of Solar System's Invisible Frontier
FiReaNGeL writes an unexpected side-effect from NASA's STEREO spacecraft has allowed scientists to see a much more well-defined picture of the boundary of our solar system. "The twin STEREO spacecraft were launched in 2006 into Earth's orbit about the sun to obtain stereo pictures of the sun's surface and to measure magnetic fields and ion fluxes associated with solar explosions. Between June and October 2007, however, the suprathermal electron sensor in the IMPACT (In-situ Measurements of Particles and CME Transients) suite of instruments on board each STEREO spacecraft detected neutral atoms originating from the same spot in the sky: the shock front and the heliosheath beyond, where the sun plunges through the interstellar medium."
Wouldn't it be possible, using the sun as a center point, to measure the distance to the termnation shock vs the boundaries of the heliosphere to determine how fast and in what vector our solar system is moving through space relative to the center of our galaxy? Or has this already been done, 'cause I can't find the info.
Possibly, using this information, couldn't an orbital pattern of our solar system be extrapolated against the center of the galaxy as a reference point?