Voyager Observations of the Interstellar Medium

Authors: john richardson, The Voyager Team, The SHIELD Team

The Voyager spacecraft have been in the local interstellar medium (LISM) since 2012 and 2018, with Voyager 1 now over 40 AU past the heliopause. We discuss recent observations and their implications for how the LISM interacts with the heliosphere. Examples are pressure fronts and shocks which produce changes in the magnetic field and density and sometimes generate electron plasma oscillations. Other puzzles are the magnetic field direction, which is rotating away from the predicted LISM direction, and plasma density and magnetic field magnitude, which are higher than LISM expectations.