Abstract
THE structure of the solar corona is believed to be governed by the solar magnetic field induced by currents at the surface of the Sun and perhaps within the corona itself1. Inhomogeneities in the corona are well known from radially compensated eclipse images2 in white light or coronal emission lines3. We have used two whitelight images taken about three hours apart by the Multi-station International Coronal Experiment4 during the July 1991 total eclipse in an attempt to deduce directly the three-dimensional structure of the corona. We observed prominent coronal structures, including broad threads, rays and streamers, and used them to calibrate a model based on solid-body rotation and bulk coronal outflow. The errors in the reconstruction method are small enough to give us confidence that quasi-rigid rotation is a reasonable approximation over these timescales. We illustrate the deduced coronal structure by means of a stereogram.
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Koutchmy, S., Molodensky, M. Three-dimensional image of the solar corona from white-light observations of the 1991 eclipse. Nature 360, 717–719 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1038/360717a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/360717a0
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