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Science 6 August 1999:
Vol. 285. no. 5429, pp. 862 - 864
DOI: 10.1126/science.285.5429.862
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Reports

TRACE Observation of Damped Coronal Loop Oscillations: Implications for Coronal Heating

V. M. Nakariakov, 1 L. Ofman, 2* E. E. DeLuca, 3 B. Roberts, 1 J. M. Davila 4

The imaging telescope on board the Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE) spacecraft observed the decaying transversal oscillations of a long [(130 ± 6) × 106 meters], thin [diameter (2.0 ± 0.36) × 106 meters], bright coronal loop in the 171 angstrom FeIX emission line. The oscillations were excited by a solar flare in the adjacent active region. The decay time of the oscillations is 14.5 ± 2.7 minutes for an oscillation with a frequency 3.90 ± 0.13 millihertz. The coronal dissipation coefficient is estimated to be eight to nine orders of magnitude larger than the theoretically predicted classical value. The larger dissipation coefficient may solve existing difficulties with wave heating and reconnection theories.

1 School of Mathematical and Computational Sciences, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Fife KY16 9SS, Scotland.
2 Raytheon ITSS/NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, 682, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA.
3 Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
4 NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, 682, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA.
*   To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: leon.ofman{at}gsfc.nasa.gov

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