The plasma in the solar corona is heated rapidly from about one million degrees to over 10 million degrees in the order of a minute or so. This requires the release of a vast amount of energy and the only available source of energy is the coronal magnetic field. The aim of this project is to investigate mechanisms that allow the coronal magnetic field, firstly, to store the necessary energy and then, secondly, release it when some instability is triggered. No previous knowledge of the Sun is required. The recent SOHO satelite has discovered many new properties of coronal plumes.
Plumes are structures that are seen inside the open magnetic field regions of coronal holes.
It is thought that plumes are the source of the high speed streams observed in the solar wind. This project will investigate a simple model for plumes, based on the Parker solar wind model. No previous knowledge of the Sun is required. The dynamics of the solar corona is dominated by the local magnetic field. Small disturbances will set up wave motions in the plasma and the observed frequencies provide information about the magnetic field strength, the plasma density and temperature.