Probing the Fundamental Physics of the Solar Corona with Lunar Solar Occultation Observations
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Probing the Fundamental Physics of the Solar Corona with Lunar Solar Occultation Observations S. Rifai Habbal · H. Morgan · M. Druckmüller · A. Ding · J.F. Cooper · A. Daw · E.C. Sittler Jr.
Received: 14 February 2012 / Accepted: 23 August 2012 / Published online: 27 September 2012 © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012
Abstract Imaging and spectroscopy of the solar corona, coupled with polarimetry, are the only tools available at present to capture signatures of physical processes responsible for coronal heating and solar wind acceleration within the first few solar radii above the solar limb. With the recent advent of improved detector technology and image processing techniques, broad-band white light and narrow-band multi-wavelength observations of coronal forbidden lines, made during total solar eclipses, have started to yield new views about the thermodynamic and magnetic properties of coronal structures. This paper outlines these
Observations and Modelling of the Inner Heliosphere Guest Editors: Mario M. Bisi, Richard A. Harrison, and Noé Lugaz S.R. Habbal () · H. Morgan Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii, 2680 Woodlawn Drive, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA e-mail: [email protected] H. Morgan e-mail: [email protected] M. Druckmüller Brno University of Technology, Techniká 2, 616 69 Brno, Czech Republic e-mail: [email protected] A. Ding Institute of Optics and Atomic Physics, Technische Universitaet Berlin, and Institute of Technical Physics, Berlin, Germany e-mail: [email protected] J.F. Cooper · A. Daw · E.C. Sittler Jr. Heliophysics Science Division, NASA/GSFC, Greenbelt, MD, USA J.F. Cooper e-mail: [email protected] A. Daw e-mail: [email protected] E.C. Sittler Jr. e-mail: [email protected]
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unique capabilities, which until present, have been feasible primarily with observations during natural total solar eclipses. This work also draws attention to the exciting possibility of greatly increasing the frequency and duration of solar eclipse observations with Moon orbiting observatories utilizing lunar limb occultation of the solar disk for coronal measurements. Keywords Corona · Eclipse · Solar wind
1. Introduction Imaging and spectroscopy of the solar corona continue to provide the main observational tools for exploring the source regions of the solar wind. Our current knowledge of the evolution of the composition and thermodynamics of the plasma in the inner corona, within heliocentric distances of about 10 R , as well as of solar magnetic fields and turbulent motions, has been significantly enhanced by the fleet of space-borne observatories starting with Skylab in 1973. The main advantage of these observatories has been the exploitation of emission in the ultraviolet (e.g. SMM, SOHO, STEREO, SDO) to X-rays and gamma-rays (e.g. SMM, Yohkoh, RHESSI), untenable from ground-based facilities, as well as the acquisition of uninterrupted observations in time with increasing time cadences. Launched in 1995, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, SO
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