WISPR translational tomography: extracting locations of nearby coronal rays

Authors: Kenny Kenny (CU Boulder, SwRI), Sam Van Kooten (SwRI), Craig DeForest (SwRI), Paulett Liewer (JPL)

As a ‘local’ imager aboard the Parker Solar Probe (PSP), the Wide-field Imager for Parker Solar Probe (WISPR) provides novel opportunities to not only image the fine-scale corona but also infer large-scale structure of the corona. With particular WISPR analysis methods, we can connect WISPR’s large-scale view of the corona with detailed in situ measurements from other PSP instruments. One of these analysis techniques, which we call ‘translational tomography,’ utilizes unique perspective changes of local ray-like density features in WISPR’s FOV. We use these perspective changes to extract feature locations from this particular class of features. Our successful reconstructions take the form of an image plane, a ‘tomogram,’ along the near-perihelion orbital path. Our tomograms afford higher resolution than WISPR images alone because we average over time and are sensitive to features below the noise floor. In the final stages of method validation on synthetic datasets, we will soon apply our technique to real WISPR data and wish to explore how our tomography might inform in situ measurements and vice versa. Finally, I will describe an in-development technique to apply these analyses to radio coronal Faraday rotation studies of the solar corona and solar wind.