The Solar Corona in Interplanetary Space

Abstract

An account is given of further observations of the outer corona made during 1960, 1961 and 1962. The radio scattering technique was used, and by comparing measurements on the Crab Nebula and 3C 123 it is shown that the scattering corona is considerably flattened towards the equatorial plane. New arguments are discussed which indicate that the coronal filaments have diameters smaller than 5000 km at 60 $$R_\odot$$ ; when extrapolated to the solar surface these dimensions are comparable to the scale of chromospheric spicules. An analysis of the observed radial variation of scattering has been made and it is shown that the observations are consistent with a rapid solar wind provided that the flow lines converge slightly towards the equatorial plane. Consideration is given to the electron density which is necessary to account for the observed scattering phenomena.