Cometary–Meteoric Gas in the Solar Corona: The Dynamics of Ca Ions

Abstract

Prolonged searches for the cold matter brought into the solar corona from the outskirts of the Solar system have finally been crowned with success. After the first prediction about the possibility of detecting emission from certain atoms and low-charge ions made by Shestakova in 1990, several attempts have been made to detect the resonance emission of Ca ions in the solar corona. The wide-field interferometric observations of the corona in the Ca II H and K lines performed by Gulyaev on Shcheglov's facility revealed an extended emission region to the west of the Sun only during the solar eclipse of February 26, 1998. We attempt to construct a model for the motion of Ca ions after their separation from the parent body. The ions move away from the Sun mainly under light pressure. Reasonably good agreement of the model with the observed radial velocities and the emission configuration is achieved by assuming that the chain of parent bodies moves from the south northward in a parabolic orbit almost perpendicularly to the plane of the ecliptic.