Beginning in summer 1957, W. N. Christiansen and D. S. Mathewson [1] have regularly obtained two-dimensional radioheliograms at λ = 21 cm with a resolving power of 3 minutes of arc. The authors have already noticed the close connection between the regions of radio emission on the one side and the fields of spots and faculae on the other side. Considering, however, that the radio emission at the wavelength involved emerges from heights of 20,000 to 50,000, or even up to 100,000 km above the photosphere, i.e. from the inner corona, it seems to be more suitable to compare the radioheliograms with the optical emission of the corona than with the photospheric and chromospheric phenomena. Yet, as the coronal observations can be carried out at the solar limb only, it is difficult to get optical pictures of the corona in front of the sun's disk. Such a picture has to be built up from the daily limb-observations covering the period from 7 days before to 7 days after the date in question; e.g. the coronal intensities shown along the central meridian are measured 7 days before at the E-limb or 7 days later at the W-limb. Since the corona may change greatly within a few days—especially during the present high solar activity—the reliability of an optical corona-picture diminishes from the limb to the central meridian. In addition, a further uncertainty has to be considered in constructing coronal maps, in so far as no station possesses complete coronal observations; therefore, observations of different stations have to be used, which are very difficult to reduce to each other. The main difficulty of such a reduction arises from the fact that the single stations carry out their observations at different distances from the sun's limb ranging from 20,000 to 45,000 km. The coronagrams discussed in the following are based on the intensities of the green coronal line 5303 Å as published in the Quarterly Bulletin on Solar Activity [2].
Accuracy Assessment of Hipparcos Optical and VLA Radio Positions of Stars
