Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T20:37:08.881Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Semi-empirical 2D model of the solar corona and solar wind using solar eclipse images: Progress report

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2020

Edward C. Sittler Jr.
Affiliation:
email: mailto:[email protected]
Linda M. Sittler
Affiliation:
email: mailto:[email protected]
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

We present white light images of the Sun's corona acquired during the total Solar Eclipses on August 21, 2017 in mountains north of Boise Idaho USA and on July 2, 2019 south of Copiapo Chile. In both cases the viewing was excellent, altitudes ∼ 1200 m and relative humidity ∼ 10. We used an Orion equatorial reflecting telescope with 203 mm diameter aperture and 1000 mm focal length for f4.9 optics. A computer-controlled Canon EOS Rebel T3i digital camera was used. We plan to use our 2019 eclipse images for analysis since the Sun is near solar minimum so 2D steady state MHD equations can be used. We present a plan to process the images and convert them into a 2D empirical model of electron density and magnetic field in radial distance and co-latitude, from which 2D maps of flow velocity, effective temperature and effective heat flux can be computed.

Type
Contributed Papers
Copyright
© International Astronomical Union 2020

References

Airapetian, V., Ofman, L., Sittler, E. C., Jr., & Kramar, M. 2011. Probing the thermodynamics and kinematics of solar coronal streamers, Astrophys. J., 728:67, 1.Google Scholar
Clark, R. N. 2013, http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/digital.photons.and.qe/, last updated January 4, 2013.Google Scholar
Druckmüller, M. 2009, Phase correlation method for the alignment of total solar eclipse images, Astrophys. J., 706, 16051608, doi:10.1088/0004-637X/706/2/1605.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Habbal, S. R., Cooper, J. F., Daw, A., Ding, A., Druckmüller, M., Esser, R., Johnson, J., & Morgan, H. 2011, Exploring the Physics of the corona with total solar eclipse observations, https://arxiv.org/abs/1108.2323 [astro-ph.SR].Google Scholar
Guhathakurta, M., Holzer, T. E., & MacQueen, R. M. 1996, The large-scale density structure of the solar corona and the heliospheric current sheet, Astrophys. J., 458, 817831.Google Scholar
Hulst, H. C. van de, 1950, The electron density of the solar corona, Bull. Astron. Inst. Netherlands, 11, 135150.Google Scholar
Hulst, H. C. van de, 1953, Chapter 5: The chromosphere and the corona, in The Sun (Univ. of Chicago Press).Google Scholar
Kramar, M., Jones, S., Davila, J., Inhester, B., & Mierla, M. 2009, On the tomographic reconstruction of the 3D electron density for the solar corona from STEREO COR1 data, Solar Physics, 259, 109121.Google Scholar
Reddy, S. B. & Chatterji, B. N., 1996, An FFT-Based technique for translation, rotation, and scale-invariant image registration, IEEE Trans. Image Process., 5, 12661271.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schild, R. E., Peterson, D. M., & Oke, J. B. 1971, Effective temperatures of B- and A- Type stars, Astrophys. J., 166, 95.Google Scholar
Sittler, E. C., Jr. & Guhathakurta, M. 1999, Semiempirical two-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic model of the solar corona and interplanetary medium, Astrophys. J., 523, 812826.Google Scholar
Sittler, E. C., Jr. & Guhathakurta, M. 2002, Erratum: “Semiempirical two-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic model of the solar corona and interplanetary medium” (ApJ, 523, 812 [1999]), Astrophys. J., 564, 10621065.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sittler, E. C., Jr. & Ofman, L. 2006, 2D MHD model of the solar corona and solar wind: Recent results, ILWS Workshop 2006, Goa, February 19–20, 2006.Google Scholar
Sumner, R. 2014, Processing RAW Images in MATLAB, https://rcsumner.net/raw_guide/RAWguide.pdf, May 19, 2014.Google Scholar
Woo, R. 2019, Naked eye observations of the 2017 total solar eclipse: a more complete understanding of the white-light corona, MNRAS 485, 41224127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar