The Heliospheric Contribution to the Soft X-Ray Background Emission

摘要

The soft x-ray background observed from Earth contains contributions not only from outside the solar system such as the local bubble but contributions from within the solar system including from the interplanetary medium and from the terrestrial geocorona. Great effort was spent on removing non-cosmic contamination from data collected during the ROSAT all-sky survey. Some of the contamination, however, was due to x-ray emission from solar wind charge exchange with interstellar and geocoronal neutrals. The time varying component of this contamination was removed but the steady state component was not. In this paper we will discuss our method of calculating the steady state component of solar wind charge exchange contamination and will present all-sky maps of the soft x-ray emission with this steady state component removed, which will allow for a re-interpretation of the nature of the local interstellar bubble. This method also can be used to obtain information on solar wind fluxes and on solar wind composition at different locations throughout the heliosphere.