Scatter in the Positions of Sources of Associated Type III Solar Bursts

For a number of years the occurrence of isolated groups of apparently related type III bursts has been recognized as a common feature of the dynamic spectral records of solar radio emission at metre wavelengths. Interferometer observations supported the simple hypothesis that bursts of a group were usually located in the same position. In this note we report 80 MHz observations made with the Culgoora radioheliograph which show that although the sources of the bursts in a group tend to overlap one another, their centroids may show marked scatter and that their distribution tends to be along narrow lanes across the solar disk. Since the 80 MHz sources occur at heights (≳ 0.6 R⊙) near or above the plasma level, these lanes doubtless reflect some structural feature of the outer corona.