Deprojected Trajectory of Blobs in the Inner Corona

Abstract

We have carried out a statistical analysis of the kinematical behavior of small white-light transients (blobs) as tracers of the slow solar wind. The characterization of these faint white-light structures gives us insight on the origin and acceleration of the slow solar wind. The vantage observing points provided by the SECCHI and LASCO instruments on board the STEREO and SOHO spacecraft, respectively, allow us to reconstruct the 3D trajectories of these blob-like features and hence calculate their deprojected kinematical parameters. We have studied 44 blobs revealed in LASCO C2/C3 and SECCHI COR2 data from 2007 to 2008, a period within the solar minimum between Solar Cycles 23 and 24. We found that the blobs propagate along approximately constant position angles with accelerations from 1.40 to 15.34ms−2 between 3.42 R☉ and 14.80 R☉, their radial sizes ranging between 0.57 R☉ and 1.69 R☉. We also studied the global corona magnetic field morphology for a subset of blobs using a potential field source surface model for cases where blob detachments persist for two to five days. The study of localized blob releases indicates that these plasma structures start their transit at a distance of ∼3.40R☉ and their origin is connected either with the boundaries of weak coronal holes or with streamers at equatorial latitudes.