Global Characteristics of the Solar Corona

Advisors: Charles Kankelborg and Sarah Jaeggli

The solar corona is commonly imaged in a number of different EUV bands that are dominated by differing ionic species and temperatures. The literature is replete with qualitative judgments of the differing appearances of the solar corona viewed through these different filters. This summer we will quantify the morphology of a large number of images obtained in all the bands off the Solar Dynamics Observatory Atmospheric Imaging Assembly. Through a combination of Fourier, wavelet, and other image analysis techniques, we will test the hypothesis that the differences that are so apparent to our eyes can be explained by one or more simple physical parameters such as scale height or volume filling factor. Alternatively, might the different qualitative appearances arise from fundamentally different types of coronal structure imaged by the SDO filters?