This folder contains the dust data measured with Helios 1. Helios 2 did not provide any
meaningful dust measurements.
The decriptions of the tables were translated from German to English based on the
Appendix in Eberhard Grün's habilitation thesis (see folder 'Publications').
Entries for Table 1:
List of micrometeorites detected by Helios 1. Details can be found in Section IV.3.
Col 1: Particle number
Col 2: Day of year and year when the impact happened
Col 3: Sensor which registered the impact (E: ecliptic sensor; S: south sensor)
Cols 4 to 6: Impact speed v, and lower (v_u) and upper (v_o) uncertainty limit, unit: km/s
Cols 7 to 9: Particle mass m, and lower (m_u) and upper (m_o) uncertainty limit, unit: gram
Col 10: Heliocentric distance r of spacecraft at particle impact in AU
Col 11: True anomaly angle (rl) of Helios 1 at the time of particle impact
Col 12: Azimuth angle (apex), which is the orientation of the sensor axis projected on
to the ecliptic. An angle of 90 deg refers to the direction towards the Sun,
0 deg points perpendicular to the Sun direction in the direction of motion
of Helios (apex direction). A letter 'e' behind the entry means that from the
azimuth angle and the true anomaly angle alone one can derive that the particle
orbit must be eccentric.
Col 13: Total impact charge Qsp measured in the spectrum in units of 10^-13 Coulomb.
Col 14: Data type: amplitude range of impact charge value Q_I, 'G' means protected,
'U' means unprotected data.
Entries for Table 2:
Orbital parameters based on the models including radiation pressure, details can be found in
Section 6.2.
Col 1: Particle number
Col 2 and 3: Mean of reciprocal value of the particle semimajor axis and its uncertainty value, unit: AU
Col 4 and 5: Mean eccentricity of particle orbit and its uncertainty value
Col 6 and 7: Mean inclination of particle orbit and its uncertainty value, unit: degrees
Col 8 and 9: Mean perihelion distance of particle orbit and its uncertainty value, unit: AU
Col 10: Probability that the particle trajectory was oriented towards the Sun (entry > 0.75)
or away from the Sun (entry < 0.25) during the impact, respectively. Entries
in the range 0.25 ... 0.75 mean that the particle was detected close to its
perihelion or aphelion.
Col 11: Probability that the particle trajectory was hyperbolic (i.e. eccentricity > 1).
Entries in this column for a hyperbolic trajectory exceed 0.75.
Col 12: Radiation pressure model which yields a hyperbolic particle trajectory (i.e.
entry in col 11 > 0.75). '0' entries mean that the particle was on a hyperbolic
trajectory based on models 0, 1 and 2. '1' entries mean that the particle
trajectory is hyperbolic based on models 1 and 2. '2' means that the particle
trajectory is hyperbolic based on model 2. If no entry is given, none of the
radiation pressure models yields a value for Col 11 > 0.75.
Entries for Table 3:
Col 1: Particle number
Col 2: Total impact charge Qsp measured in the spectrum in units of 10^-13 Coulomb (repeated
from Tab. 1). An '*" indicates that the positive impact charge O_I was at the upper
end of the measurement range.
Col 3: Density. Entries 'nD' refer to 'excentric" particles with larger masses and speeds
than the one corresponding to the penetration limit of particles with density
0.1 g/cm^-3, cf. Fig. 46.
Col 4: Chemical classification. 'Ch': chondritic spectrum, 'Fe': iron-rich spectrum,
'Un': undetermined spectrum.
Col 5 to 16: Mass spectrum. The ion charge intensity is given for 12 mass ranges between 16 u
and 74 u. The ion charge intensity over the entire mass range is normalized to 1.
The 12 mass ranges are: 16-20 u, 20-25 u, 25-30 u, 30-35 u, 35-40 u, 40-45 u,
45-50 u, 50-55 u, 55-60 u, 60-65 u, 65-70 u, 70-74 u.
The table gives the total measurement time in fractions of the total time for different kinds
of events and distance range of Helios. The measurement time apply to the first 10 orbits of
Helios 1 around the Sun, i.e. from 10 December 1974 to 23 February 1980.
Data types:
Q_I amplitude ranges:
1, 2, 3, 4
Protected (geschuetzt) Data:
"G"
Unprotected Data:
"U"
Col 1 and 2: Heliocentric distance range of Helios in AU
Col 3 to 6: Fractions of total time that is classified as measurement time.
Col 7: Total time Helios spent in the distance interval given in Col 1, unit: s.