R. Von Steiger - Böcker

It is well known, that the Sun as central star of our solar system gravitationally controls the orbits of planets and minor bodies. Much less known is the domain of plasma fields and charged particles, however, in which the Sun with a radius of less than 0.7 Million km governs the heliosphere out to about 15 Billion km, a distance about 20 000 times larger in radius or nearly 1013 times bigger in volume. What forces activates the Sun to maintain this power? Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) and their descendants are the troops serving the Sun during high solar activity periods. This volume offers a comprehensive and integrated overview of our present knowledge and understanding of Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) and their descendants, Interplanetary CMEs (ICMEs). It results from a series of workshops held between 2000 and 2004. An international team of about sixty experimenters involved e.g. in the SOHO, ULYSSES, VOYAGER, PIONEER, HELIOS, WIND, IMP, and ACE missions, ground observers, and theoreticians worked jointly on interpreting the observations and developing new models for CME initiations, development, and interplanetary propagation.The book is intended to provide scientists active in space physics research a with an up-to-date status of the current understanding of CMEs and ICMEs and their effects in the heliosphere, and also to serve the advanced graduate student with introductory material on this active field of research.

we thank Johannes for providing us with the occasion to gather in his name and for shaping and supporting the careers of so many of us. May 2007 R. von Steiger, G. Gloeckler, G.M. Mason Space Sci Rev (2007) 130: 3–4 DOI 10.1007/s11214-007-9240-0 Acknowledgement Published online: 21 July 2007 © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007 Early in 2006, Edward C. Stone, Principal Investigator of NASA’s Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE); Len A. Fisk, Chair of the Space Studies Board of the US National Research Council; and the Directorate of the International Space Science Institute (ISSI), Roger M. Bonnet, Andre Balogh and Rudolf von Steiger, agreed to hold a joint ACE/ISSI Symposium on the “Composition of Matter”, at the occasion of my 80th birthday. I feel deeply honoured by this exceptional distinction and was thrilled to participate, because for more than 50 years my research has been centred around measurements of the composition of matter of various origins, reaching—in geocentric coordinates—from deep-sea sediments to the limits of solar in uence, where comets come from and where the solar wind meets the interstellar medium. The symposium at Grindelwald, beautifully located at the foot of the Bernese Alps, was organised by Ruedi von Steiger, Silvia Wenger and Barbara Gerber, who created the special atmosphere for which ISSI meetings have become known.

This volume gives a comprehensive and integrated overview of current knowledge about the local interstellar medium (LISM) surrounding our heliosphere (HS). It is the result of the first workshop at ISSI, where both space physicists and astronomers presented and discussed their views on the density, velocity, temperature, composition, and morphology of the LISM and how it interacts with the HS. Thevolume is a combination of data obtained by remote UV, EUV, and X-ray observations outside the HS with in situ observations of interstellar atoms, ions, and dust inside the HS. It thus demonstrates a new synergy between these two communities. The book is intended to provide active researchers in space physics and in astronomy with an up-to-date status report of its topic, and also to furnish the advanced graduate student with introductory material into the field.

It is well known, that the Sun as central star of our solar system gravitationally controls the orbits of planets and minor bodies. Much less known is the domain of plasma fields and charged particles, however, in which the Sun with a radius of less than 0.7 Million km governs the heliosphere out to about 15 Billion km, a distance about 20 000 times larger in radius or nearly 1013 times bigger in volume. What forces activates the Sun to maintain this power? Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) and their descendants are the troops serving the Sun during high solar activity periods. This volume offers a comprehensive and integrated overview of our present knowledge and understanding of Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) and their descendants, Interplanetary CMEs (ICMEs). It results from a series of workshops held between 2000 and 2004. An international team of about sixty experimenters involved e.g. in the SOHO, ULYSSES, VOYAGER, PIONEER, HELIOS, WIND, IMP, and ACE missions, ground observers, and theoreticians worked jointly on interpreting the observations and developing new models for CME initiations, development, and interplanetary propagation.The book is intended to provide scientists active in space physics research a with an up-to-date status of the current understanding of CMEs and ICMEs and their effects in the heliosphere, and also to serve the advanced graduate student with introductory material on this active field of research.