Temporal and spatial characteristics of the large-scale structures of the solar corona

TL;DRAbstract

A 25-year long record of the distribution of polarized brightness of the white light (electron scattered) solar corona has been subjected to an analysis of the temporal variation of various spherical harmonic components necessary to describe the observed coronal distribution. The spherical harmonic characteristics of the corona and their temporal behavior are summarized in this paper. If some portion of the coronal mass distribution is dominated by a rigidly rotating solar magnetic field, then a sufficient explanation of the observed persistent large scale corona is that it is governed not only by an axisymmetric magnetic field, similar to the one associated with the photospheric torroidal magnetic field, but is also influenced by other poloidal fields. The superposition of a set of discrete magnetic poloidal fields having periodic or quasi-periodic variation provides a satisfactory spatial and temporal model of the slow variation of the large scale structures observed in the solar cor

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