Astron. Astrophys. 319, 664-668 (1997)

Polarization of the green-line corona on July 11, 1991 solar eclipse

O.G. Badalyan ¹ and J. Sýkora <sup>2

1</sup> Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism, Ionosphere and Radio Wave Propagation, 142092 Troitsk, Russia
² Astronomical Institute, 05960 Tatranská Lomnica, Slovak Republic

Received 5 April 1996 / Accepted 21 August 1996

Abstract

High quality photographic polarized images of the green-line 530.3 nm corona were obtained during the July 11, 1991 solar eclipse by using a narrow-band 0.17 nm interference filter. Image processing allowed us to derive the green-line polarization within the range 1.08 - 1.40 . The corresponding degrees of polarization p vary from 0% up to about 30% in different coronal regions. At equatorial latitudes p varies from 0% to 15%, while in the brightest coronal regions it does not exceed 5%. In regions of observed high-latitude white-light coronal streamers, the green-line polarization gradually increases with distance from 10% to about 30%. Anticorrelation between the degree of polarization and the green-line corona intensity was found in analysing the entire data matrix. It seems that this finding in itself contains information about the role of electron collisions in the excitation of the green line, and about certain physical properties of the coronal magnetic field.

Key words: polarization eclipses Sun: corona; magnetic fields

Send offprint requests to: J. Sýkora

Contents

• 1. Introduction
• 2. Experiment and observation
• 3. Analysis of the observational data
• 4. Results
• 5. Discussion
• Acknowledgements
• References

© European Southern Observatory (ESO) 1997

Online publication: July 3, 1998
helpdesk@link.springer.de