Maps of the Coronal Electron Density Distribution at Solar Maximum - Estimates Based on LASCO Observations

Estimating the 3D distribution of electron density from a set of 2D white light observations is a critical challenge in coronal physics. Such an estimation is difficult during solar maximum due to rapid structural changes in the corona, and to the frequent `contamination' of observations by transient event. The primary aim of this work is to create global maps of electron density for Carrington Rotation 1953 which provide reasonable agreement with polarized brightness observed by the LASCO C2 coronagraph. The technique is based on a solar rotational tomography technique, and while the densities contained within the initially created maps are in arbitrary units, we assume that it gives a reasonable estimate of the 3D spatial distribution, or position, of density structures. A smaller set of LASCO polarized brightness observations are then used as a constraint in a least-squares fitting routine to improve the agreement between observation and model. This step also converts the density map from arbitrary to electron density units. Given the rapid structural changes of the solar maximum corona, our static estimate of electron density gives reasonable agreement with polarized brightness observations. Improvements to the technique will be discussed.