Heliopause, boundary of the heliosphere, the spherical region around the Sun that is filled with solar magnetic fields and the outward-moving solar wind consisting of protons and electrons. Nearer the Sun than the heliopause lies the heliosheath, a region of transition where the solar wind slows to subsonic speeds—that is, slower than the speed with which disturbances travel through the interstellar medium. The heliopause is about 123 astronomical units (AU; 18 billion km [11 billion miles]) from the Sun. The shape of the heliopause fluctuates and is influenced by a wind of interstellar gas caused by the Sun’s motion through space. The orbits of all the major planets, including Earth’s, lie well within the heliopause. The only spacecraft to cross the heliopause has been Voyager 1, which was launched in 1977 and reached it in 2012. Voyager 1 discovered the location of the heliopause by observing an increase of cosmic-ray particles coming into the solar system after they passed through the boundary and by detecting the radio emission generated when material thrown off by the Sun in coronal mass ejections crossed it.
The heliopause is the boundary between the Sun's solar wind and the interstellar medium. The solar wind blows a "bubble" known as the heliosphere into the interstellar medium. The outer border of this "bubble" is where the solar wind's strength is no longer great enough to push back the interstellar medium. This is known as the heliopause, and is often considered to be the outer border of the solar system. The zone between the termination shock and the heliopause is known as the heliosheath.
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