Sun Coronaastronomy

Another important set of unknown lines revealed during an eclipse came from the corona, and so its source element was called coronium. In 1940 the source of the lines was identified as weak magnetic dipole transitions in various highly ionized atoms such as iron X (iron with nine electrons missing), Fe XIV, and calcium XV, which can exist only if the coronal temperature is about 1,000,000 K. These lines can only be emitted in a high vacuum. The strongest are from iron, which alerted investigators to its high abundance, nearly equal to that of oxygen. Later it was found that there had been errors in prior photospheric determinations.

While the corona is one million times fainter than the photosphere in visible light (about the same as the full Moon at its base and much fainter at greater heights), its high temperature makes it a powerful source of extreme ultraviolet and X-ray emission. Loops of bright material connect distant magnetic fields. There are regions of little or no corona called coronal holes. The brightest regions are the active regions surrounding sunspots. Hydrogen and helium are entirely ionized, and the other atoms are highly ionized. The ultraviolet portion of the spectrum is filled with strong spectral lines of the highly charged ions. The density at the base of the corona is about 4 × 10⁸ atoms per cubic centimetre, 10¹³ times more tenuous than the atmosphere of the Earth at its base. Because the temperature is high, the density drops slowly, by a factor of e (2.718) every 50,000 kilometres.

Radio telescopes are particularly valuable for studying the corona because radio waves will propagate only when their frequency exceeds the so-called plasma frequency of the local medium. The plasma frequency varies according to the density of the medium, and so measurements of each wavelength tell us the temperature at the corresponding density. At higher frequencies (above 1,000 MHz) electron absorption is the main factor, and at those frequencies the temperature is measured at the corresponding absorbing density. All radio frequencies come to us from above the photosphere; this is the prime way of determining atmospheric temperatures.

Similarly, all of the ultraviolet and X-ray emission of the Sun comes from the chromosphere and corona, and the presence of such layers can be detected in stars by measuring their spectra at these wavelengths.