The influence of the stray-light component in determining coronal temperature structures

Abstract

We use a few solar partial eclipse observations made by XRT/Hinode to estimate the influence of stray-light component in determining coronal temperature structures. Our analysis shows that the stray light will largely affect the estimation of coronal temperature and change the estimated temperature structure in one coronal hole region. The stray lights mildly influence the estimated temperatures in one quiet Sun region and do not change the estimated temperature structure. This implies that the influence of stray lights differs from one region to another, and definitely needs to be considered in some regions. Whereas a carefully estimated point-spread-function is needed to remove the stray light component, our study shows that by a simple approach such as subtracting the average intensity of distant (e.g. >1.4 solar radius) points from the data values, the influence of stray light can be largely removed, at least for the two regions we study here.