REPORT FROM ISAS
                           18-May-94 to 27-May-94
                                D. Alexander



This week started badly.  Glasgow Rangers FC lost 1-0 to Dundee United
in the Scottish Cup final.  Despite the trauma that this caused the Chief
Observer managed to carry out his duties without screaming, kicking or
stamping his feet.  The week did improve gradually and Thursday night
saw an illustrious company celebrating the 1000th day since the launch
of the Yohkoh satellite.  'It seems like only yesterday' some of the older
ones amongst us were heard to cry.  The ceremonial launching
of sake and biru in honour of this great event was carried out with 
appropriate solemnity.

The Sun has shown us its adolescent side again and has a distinctly freckly 
appearance (this nomenclature has been chosen in deference to Leka-sama).
The GOES plot is drifting below the A level.  The Sun seems to have two
distinct faces at the moment, one which has some reasonable active regions
on it and the other which is extremely quiet.  This should give us the
oppportunity to carry out some interesting long exposure quiet Sun observations
while maintaining a degree of active region loop studies.  

Many of our colleagues are attending the AGU in Baltimore this week leaving
D-toh predominantly in the hands of the Celtic race.  I have been joined this
week by Norman Gray and Sarah Matthews from the University of Glasgow.
This has resulted in some interesting scientific discussions and a severe shortage
in the Japanese malt whisky supplies.   Another Celt was here briefly. Louise
Harra returned from her honeymoon only to race off again to the UK for a
job interview.  Good luck, Louise. 

The chromospheric ejection campaign in collaboration with Brigitte Schmieder
of Meudon and several ground-based observatories continued this week.  The
data from this campaign have not been analysed yet but the target selections have 
so far been successful with Meudon obtaining spectroheliograms and Pic du Midi
observing some bright points.  SXT carried out some fixed point observations
on AR7722 until it disappeared over the western limb and is now observing AR7727. 

Greg Slater and I have been working hard putting together some, hopefully,
interesting thoughts and questions on polar crown events, and in particular the 
one of 14-Apr-94 (for a brief description see last week's report).  We hope
to discuss this with the many luminaries attending next week's IACG meeting.
Note that IACG is not a TLA.  We have been looking at the correspondence
between the Kitt Peak He 10830 and magnetogram data and the SXT images.
There is some evidence for footpoint structure in the He 10830 associated with
the SXT loops (?) and the general footpoint structure appears to last at least 
one solar rotation. 

Greg Slater has been working on determining the 3-D structure of coronal
loops observed by SXT using a stereographic reconstruction technique devised 
by Berton and Sakurai.  The preliminary analysis for this was presented at a
poster session of the AGU meeting. 

Sarah Matthews and I have been looking at the flare of 13-Jan-92, otherwise 
known as the'home-run event'.  This is an nice clean limb event for the study of 
turbulence using the BCS as it seems to be entirely perpendicular to the line 
of sight and uniform in cross-section.   With Hugh Hudson, we hope to consider
the various time-dependences observed in the different Yohkoh instruments
for this event with the aim of trying to understand better the physics acting
in the coronal portion of the observed flaring loop. 

Norman Gray has spent his time here working on the filamentation of magnetic
fluxtubes and in particular has been addressing the question of the importance of 
cross-field conduction in filament channels.  Norman has also been busy installing 
the Yohkoh software at Glasgow.


QUOTES OF THE WEEK

 
   A day without sunshine is like night.
                                                       Anonymous

   Living on the Earth may be expensive, but it includes
   an annual free trip around the Sun.
                                                        Anonymous


On these happy notes I will bid you adieu.  I head back home to Montana
next week so the next report from ISAS will be in a couple of weeks time,
probably from Jim Lemen who will be the next SXT Chief Observer.