UVCS/SOHO Ion Kinetics in Coronal Streamers

We made streamer observations with the Ultraviolet Coronagraph Spectrometer (UVCS) on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) during the early part of 1998, which was a time of moderate solar activity. We present an empirical study of coronal ion kinetics using the line profiles from these observations. Our first and most striking result is that the mid-latitude (ML) streamers have much narrower O VI 1032 Å line profiles than the solar minimum equatorial (SME) streamers. Our second result is that the line profiles from a small collection of ions in ML streamers do not seem to be consistent with the ions having a single temperature and turbulent velocity. We discuss several interpretations, including line of sight (LOS) effects. This work is supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under grant NAG-3192 to the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.