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Session 1 - Chromosphere, Corona, Flares.
Display session, Friday, June 27
Ballroom B, Chair: Charles Kankelborg
We present high resolution soft X-ray spectral observations of the corona above an active region, using data from the Bragg crystal spectrometer (BCS) on board the Yohkoh satellite. We observed NOAA AR 7978 as it rotated beyond the solar limb so that the lower portions of the region were occulted. Long integrations from times after the region had totally disappeared some days later show a substantial background in S \sc xv. Since the background spectrum is featureless, spectral lines obtained from the time of occultation must originate from the upper corona of the active region. Our results support previous findings that the corona consists of two components: a cooler, steady component with T_e \approx 3 MK, and a hotter, transient component in excess of 5 MK. This hotter component is due to microflares; outside the time of microflares there is relatively little or no active region upper coronal plasma with T_e \gtrsim 3.5 MK. There is evidence for a decrease in T_e with height for the cool component.
