Differential rotation in the solar corona

The soft X-ray telescope (SXT) instrument on board the Yohkoh satellite was designed to observe the solar corona for over three years. It was shown in previous works that different tracers of solar rotation, each sensitive to a different part of the solar atmosphere, yield varying results for the latitude dependence of the rotation rate; the differential rotation measured using photospheric structures is markedly different from that obtained using coronal tracers. The long term observations of the solar corona by the SXT make it ideal for the investigation of coronal differential rotation. The soft X-ray emission of the solar corona is used to trace out the rotation rate at different latitudes. This is done by dividing the solar disk into a number of latitude strips and carrying out a power-spectrum analysis of the total soft X-ray intensity in each strip over a twelve week period of the Yohkoh observations. The results are compared with the differential rotation rates obtained from other coronal tracers.