Polar Plume Brightening During the 2006 March 29 Total Eclipse
Rušin, V.; Druckmüller, M.; Minarovjech, M.; Saniga, M.; Pasachoff, J. M.; Bělík, M.; Druckmüllerová, H.; Marková, E.; Babcock, B. A.; Souza, S. P.; Levitt, J. S.
United States, Slovakia, Czech Republic
Abstract
We discuss a remarkable brightening in a polar plume, as inferred from unique coordinated observations of the white-light corona during the total eclipse of the Sun of 2006 March 29. The polar plume (also known as a polar ray, with distinctions that we discuss) was observed at the positional angle of 9° the velocity at which the brightening propagated was about 65 km s-1, which is close to the values derived by modeling of mass/energy transfer in polar plumes/rays as well as to those acquired from images from the Extreme-ultraviolet Imaging Telescope on the European Space Agency/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO/EIT). Comparing our data with those from the SOHO/LASCO C2 coronagraph, we estimate the lifetime of the polar ray to be less than 24 hr.