Comet C/2002 S2, a member of the Kreutz family of Sungrazing comets, was discovered in white light images of the SOHO/LASCO coronagraph on 2002 September 18 and observed in hi, lya, emission by the SOHO/UVCS instrument at four different heights as it
approached the Sun. The hi, lya, line profiles detected by UVCS are analyzed to determine the spectral parameters: line intensity, width and Doppler shift with respect to the coronal background. Two dimensional comet images of these parameters are reconstructed at the different heights. A novel aspect of the observations of this sungrazing comet data is that, whereas the emission from the most of the tail is blue--shifted, that along one edge of the tail is red--shifted. We attribute these shifts to a combination of solar wind speed and interaction with the magnetic field. In order to use the comet to probe the density, temperature and speed of the corona and solar wind through which it passes, as well as to determine the outgassing rate of the comet, we develop a Monte Carlo simulation of the hi, lya, emission of a comet moving through a coronal plasma. From the outgassing rate, we estimate a nucleus diameter of about 9 meters. This rate steadily increases as the comet approaches the Sun while the optical brightness decreases by more than a factor of ten and suddenly recovers. This indicates that the optical brightness is determined by the lifetimes of the grains, sodium atoms and molecules produced by the comet.
Ultraviolet spectra of the extended solar corona have been routinely obtained by SoHO/UVCS since 1996. Sudden variations of spectral parameters are mainly due to the detection of Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) crossing the instrumental slit. We presen
t a catalog of CME ultraviolet spectra based upon a systematic search of events in the LASCO CME catalog, and we discuss their statistical properties. Our catalog includes 1059 events through the end of 2005, covering nearly a full solar cycle. It is online available at the URL http://solarweb.oato.inaf.it/UVCS_CME and embedded in the online LASCO CME catalog (http://cdaw.gsfc.nasa.gov/CME_list). The emission lines observed provide diagnostics of CME plasma parameters, such as the light-of-sight velocity, density and temperature and allow to link the CME onset data to the extended corona white-light images. The catalog indicates whether there are clear signatures of features such as shock waves, current sheets, O VI flares, helical motions and which part of the CME structures (front, cavity or prominence material) are detected. The most common detected structure is the cool prominence material (in about 70% of the events). For each event, the catalog also contains movie, images, plots and information relevant to address detailed scientific investigations. The number of events detected in UV is about 1/10 of the LASCO CMEs, and about 1/4 of the halo events. We find that UVCS tends to detect faster, more massive and energetic CME than LASCO and for about 40% of the events events it has been possible to determine the plasma light-of-sight velocity.
Current sheets are important signatures of magnetic reconnection in the eruption of confined solar magnetic structures. Models of Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) involve formation of a current sheet connecting the ejected flux rope with the post erupti
on magnetic loops. Current sheets have been identified in white light images of CMEs as narrow rays trailing the outward moving CME core, and in ultraviolet spectra as narrow bright features emitting the Fe XVIII line. In this work samples of rays detected in white light images or in ultraviolet spectra have been analyzed. Temperatures, widths, and line intensities of the rays have been measured, and their correlation to the CME properties has been studied. The samples show a wide range of temperatures with hot, coronal and cool rays. In some cases, the UV spectra support the identification of rays as current sheets, but they show that some white light rays are cool material from the CME core. In many cases, both hot and cool material are present, but offset from each other along the UltraViolet Coronagraph Spectrometer (UVCS) slit. We find that about 18% of the white light rays show very hot gas consistent with the current sheet interpretation, while about 23% show cold gas that we attribute to cool prominence material draining back from the CME core. The remaining events have ordinary coronal temperatures, perhaps because they have relaxed back to a quiescent state.
