Meeting abstract

IAGA, 8th Scientific Assembly, Uppsala, Sweden, 4-8 August, 1997

Abstract:
A search through the Ulysses data set has been carried out to survey the occurrence of (large scale) planar magnetic structures (PMS) in the solar wind (between 1 and 5 AU) and analyze their associated microstructure where appropriate. The analysis techniques employed primarily test for planar ordering in the magnetic field and are supported where necessary using special forms of variance analysis. Initial results show that fast searches through the data set is very feasible, particularly because quality indicators, measuring the degree of magnetic ordering, can be defined to be highly selective. Other criteria can be easily added to separate events with related signatures (such as arise in the case of current sheet crossings, for example) for the classification of PMS. The correlation of these events to the nominal Parker spiral direction is investigated out to 5 AU.