Measurements of Faraday Rotation Through the Solar Corona During the 2009 Solar Minimum with the MESSENGER Spacecraft

Elizabeth A. Jensen, Mario Mark Bisi, Andrew Robert Breen, Carl Heiles, Toney Minter, Faith Vilas

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

16 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Measurements of Faraday rotation through the solar corona were collected using the radio beacon aboard the MESSENGER spacecraft during the longest solar minimum in a century. As MESSENGER entered superior conjunction, the plane of polarization of its radio signal was observed to rotate as it traversed the circularly birefringent plasma of the Sun’s atmosphere. On time scales of less than three hours, these uncalibrated plane of polarization observations of Faraday rotation can be used to investigate the dynamic processes in the solar plasma, such as magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) waves and coronal mass ejections (CMEs). Here we describe the MESSENGER Faraday rotation experiment, the data processing conducted to obtain the plane of polarization, and the estimation of error.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)83-95
JournalSolar Physics
Volume285
Issue number1-2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 01 Jan 2013

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