Insights into Planar Magnetic Solar Wind Structures Using New Visualization Methods

We examine the structure of the solar wind using one to four spacecraft at a time, applying a kinematic projection of the data to create spatial pictures. The results are visualized using ViSBARD (Visual System for Browsing, Analysis, and Retrieval of Data) that presents the results in 3-D, allowing a variety of manipulations. Specifically, we examine the degree to which a set of ``Planar Magnetic Structures" previously examined with ISEE-3 data are actually planar. Those with very low ratios of the minimum to the intermediate variance eigenvalues do appear quite planar, but as the ratio approaches the typical cutoff of ~2.5, it becomes difficult to identify what might be the plane of variation. We use the Alfvénicity of the intervals to show that the smoothly regions around the PMSs (which often form a ``cone" of magnetic vectors, consistent with the idea of a random walk on a sphere) are much more Alfvénic than the PMS structures. We also find that frequently the PMS structures show systematic rotations that suggest a small magnetic cloud structure. The evidence thus supports the idea that a large fraction of the PMS structures are non-wavelike flux-tubes that are convected outward from the Sun. The rapid rotations of the field used to characterize the PMS regions are very frequently associated with magnetic holes, consistent with spiral magnetic fields associated with current sheets that have been seen in MHD simulations.