Magnetic pileup boundary and field draping at Comet Halley

Here, a detailed analysis is performed in regions further upstream in the magnetosheath. The Vega-1 high resolution magnetometer data on the in- and outbound leg but inside the bow wave are reinvestigated in search for the magnetic pileup boundary as an indicator for the outer edge of the magnetic barrier. The magnetic field pileup region is studied using the correlation between the field component towards the Sun and the radial component in an aberrated cometocentric frame; this technique proved very successful for Mars and also for comets Giacobini-Zinner and Halley in the case of Giotto observations. We can clearly identify the different regimes in the magnetic field data, on the in- and outbound leg of the orbit. Waves just within the newly determined magnetic pileup region have properties different from mirror mode waves, whereas waves observed out of the magnetic pileup boundary are confirmed as mirror mode. The boundaries found at Comet Halley prove that also the detailed structure of the interaction of unmagnetized bodies with an atmosphere with the solar wind is valid for active comets, but with larger space scale.