Solar Physics Division Meeting 2000, June 19-22
Session 2. Corona, Solar Wind, Flares, CMEs, Solar-stellar, Instrumentation, Other
Display, Chair: J. Krall, Monday-Thursday, June 19, 2000, 8:00am-6:00pm, Forum Ballroom

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[2.04] The Morphology of the Solar Transition Region and Corona

A.R. Winebarger, H. P. Warren (CfA)

The solar transition region is an important boundary condition in the modeling of the solar corona, yet the basic geometry of the solar transition region, specifically the magnetic connectivity between the transition region and corona, has been heavily debated and remains poorly understood. In this poster, we will present analysis of a SUMER O VI (105.45 K) spectroheliogram, as well as several TRACE 171\,Å\ (106.0 K) and 195\,Å\ (106.2 K) images. We quantify the structure size at each temperature using a fast Fourier transform analysis of the images. From this analysis, we find the typical size of the emitting structures in the O VI image and the 171\,Å\ images is smaller than that of the structures in the 195\,Å\ images. We have also examined the magnetic connectivity of the various structures by comparing the images to co-aligned MDI magnetograms. Most of the structures present in the O VI image do not connect regions of opposite polarity network fields, while the structures observed in the 171\,Å\ and 195\,Å\ images do appear to have footpoints rooted in opposite polarity regions. From these observations, we conjecture that the geometry of the upper transition region and lower corona is dominated by spicules at O VI temperatures, small-scale loops at 171\,Å\ temperatures and large-scale loops at 195\,Å\ temperatures.


The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: awinebarger@cfa.harvard.edu

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