A comparative analysis of terrestrial and planetary bow shocks

Collisionless shocks, such as the Earth bow shock, are very spectacular and energetic events in the Universe. For instance, generated by supernovae, stellar winds, and the solar wind collisonless shock have important effects. They are considered to be efficient particle accelerators and they act galactic nebula and therefore they are considered to trigger formation of planetary systems. The Earth´s bow shock results from the interaction of the solar wind with the Earth´s magnetosphere. Compared to all other shocks wave in the Universe and even our solar system. It is easily accessible by spacecraft, has been studied in detail over the last several decades. It was one of the prime science objectives of many space missions, such as ISEE, AMPTE, Cluster, and Themis. The idea of this short paper is to provide a summary of the talk presented at the conference.