Inferring the Solar Wind Velocity in the Outer Corona Based on Multiview Observations of Small-scale Transients by STEREO/COR2

Abstract

Based on the Heliospheric Imager-1 images of the STEREO twin spacecraft, we established the CORrelation-Aided Reconstruction (CORAR) technique to locate and reconstruct the 3D structures of solar wind transients in interplanetary space. Here, we extend the CORAR method to images of COR2 on board STEREO to study the evolution of small-scale transients in the outer corona from 2010 January to May. We confirm that the transients can be located and reconstructed well by comparing the results with those of a self-similar expanding model. The speed distribution of the reconstructed transients generally shows the typical characteristics of the slow solar wind. We further study the sources of the transients on the Sun, and find that most reconstructed transients are located near the top of streamer belts or the heliospheric current sheet and can be tracked back to the boundaries of the closed-field and open-field regions along the field lines extrapolated by corona models. The formation mechanisms of these transients in the slow solar wind are also discussed.