SXT Status Report 31 October - 05 November 1994 David Alexander SUMMARY During the week of 31 October-05 November SXT participated in eclipse and MSSTA rocket observations. A full report of these operations is given below. Solar activity was low this week although there are several interesting active regions currently on the solar disk. OPERATIONS Operations this week consisted of final adjustments and actual implementation of the planned Yohkoh observations of the Nov 3 eclipse and support for the Stanford MSSTA rocket flight. The SSOC tohbans were T. Watanabe and H. Hudson, and the KSC tohbans were M. Akioka and M. Fujiki. The eclipse data turned out perfectly as planned, with the FFI's showing the progress of the eclipse across the whole disk and the PFI's neatly placed at the N edge of AR 7794 to watch the grazing knife-edge occultation of the AR loops. We did not fare so well with the simultaneous data for the rocket, unfortunately, because a thus-far unexplained error ended SXT observations about an hour before the fact. A tiger team composed of Hara, Kano, Tsuneta, and Fujitsu contractors Abe and Nomura, plus help, have been struggling with this and should have a report next week. The computers here at ISAS are having a little trouble. Belly-up may be too strong a word but it is better than some of the words that Gary was using. SOLAR ACTIVITY Solar activity was quiet this week. There were two GOES B8-class events registered from AR7794 which was the main active region targetted by SXT this week. There were reports of a small prominence in the south-east (around S15 E90) and a few even smaller prominences in the north-west quadrant from the Meudon H-alpha heliograms and a CME alert issued by Hawaii who saw a coronal enhancement between 20:28-20:56UT on Nov 3 1994, in Southwest quadrant at position angle 250. SXT observations of the southwest quadrant of solar disk saw a well defined helmet-streamer-like structure at this time. PERSONNEL Steve Kahler headed back to Toyokawa with an MO disk happily tucked under his arm and a big smile on his face (a successful week of data analysis and a couple of Hard Rock Cafe margaritas). Jim Lemen returned to Palo Alto on Tuesday, wishing he had another day "just one more day". Marilyn Bruner and Nariaki Nitta (both of Lockheed) arrived this week and Marilyn will take over as Chief Observer on Nov 5. David Alexander is currently eating a Delta airlines bento lunch and wishing he had chosen the chicken. SCIENCE There was no Yohkoh seminar this week due to eclipse fatigue. Zdenek Svestka continues to work hard and is producing some exciting results in the general area of "giant arch" structures, which he has found several examples of. Kano and Tsuneta have submitted their paper on scaling laws in steady loops observed by SXT. This is based upon Kano's Master's thesis, and basically confirms the results of Rosner, Tucker and Vaiana. This is an important step forward in quantitative analysis of the SXT data for subjects related to coronal heating and the like. It also implies that the Skylab workers managed to calibrate their difficult system well enough to agree well with the SXT photoelectric results, which are much easier to characterize! Louise Harra has dome some excellent work in determining a localised source of BCS/SXV emission. A comparison with SXT images, coupled with an analysis of the SXV line width, for 29-Aug-94 indicates that the diffuse solar corona may not contribute significantly to the SXV line emission when the Sun is quiet. Quote of the week ================== I like work - it fascinates me. I can sit and watch it for hours at a time. Jerome K. Jerome