Observing Isothermal and Multithermal Coronal Loops using SDO-AIA
Abstract
The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) on the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) is designed to provide an unprecedented view of the solar corona. The six coronal filters peak at different temperatures and cover the entire active region temperature range, making AIA ideal for multi-thermal analysis. Here, we chose several loops in different active regions using images in the 211-A filter, which has a peak response temperature of Log T = 6.3 K. The purpose of this analysis was to determine if the loops were isothermal or multithermal. A few of our 12 loops have narrow temperature distributions, which appear consistent with isothermal plasma. Other loops have intermediate-width temperature distributions and must, therefore, be multi-stranded. The remaining loops have unrealistically broad temperature distributions. However, after a series of tests we found that this problem was the result of missing low-temperature lines in the AIA 131-A channel. We, therefore, repeated the analysis without the 131-A data; these loops then appeared well constrained and multi-stranded.
- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #218
- Pub Date:
- May 2011
- Bibcode:
- 2011AAS...21822418P