UV studies and the solar wind
Résumé
The solar wind carves a cavity in the flow of interstellar H atoms through the solar system by charge-exchange ionization. The resulting Ly-α sky pattern depends on the latitude distribution of the solar wind flux and velocity. We review how the solar wind characteristics (mass flux latitude distribution) can be retrieved from Ly-α observations, yielding a new remote sensing method of solar wind studies, through UV optical measurements.