Synoptic IPS and Yohkoh soft X‐ray observations

Abstract

Interplanetary scintillation measurements of the disturbance factor, g, from October 1991 to October 1992 are used to construct synoptic Carrington maps. These maps, which show the structure of the quiet solar wind, are compared with X‐ray Carrington maps from the Yohkoh SXT instrument. For the period studied the global structure outlined by (weakly) enhanced g‐values apparent in the IPS maps tends to match the active regions (as shown in the X‐ray maps) significantly better than the heliospheric current sheet. Contrary to traditional opinion, which views active regions as magnetically closed structures that do not have any significant impact on the solar wind flow, our results suggest that density fluctuations in the solar wind are significantly enhanced over active regions. These results support the suggestion by Uchida et al. (1992), based on Yohkoh observations of expanding active regions, that active regions play a role in feeding mass into the quiet solar wind.