Characteristic features of the solar corona during the eclipse of 1 August 2008

TL;DR

This study used a newly constructed telescope with polarizers to analyze the solar corona during the August 2008 eclipse, providing detailed polarization, brightness, and electron density distributions across various coronal structures.

Contribution

It introduces a novel observational setup with simultaneous polarized imaging to study coronal features during an eclipse, offering new insights into coronal plasma properties.

Findings

Distributions of polarization brightness and K-corona brightness were obtained.

Electron density and plasma temperature distributions were calculated.

Coronal properties varied across different structures and latitudes.

Abstract

In order to study the solar corona during eclipses, a new telescope was constructed. Three coronal images were obtained simultaneously from one objective of the telescope as the coronal radiation passed through three polarisers (whose transmission directions were turned through 0^{\circ}, 60^{\circ}, and 120^{\circ} to the chosen direction); one image without polariser was also obtained. The telescope was used to observe the solar corona during the eclipse of 1 August 2008. We obtained distributions of the polarisation brightness, K-corona brightness, degree of the K-corona polarisation and total polarisation degree; polarisation direction depending on the latitude and radius in the plane of the sky was also obtained. We calculated radial distributions of electron density, depending on the latitude. Properties of all these distributions in different coronal structures were compared. We determined temperature of coronal plasma in different coronal structures on the assumption that there is a hydrostatic equilibrium.