The Sun and the Solar Wind Close to the Sun

The structure of the solar corona is directly reflected in the structure of the solar wind. But, the importance of this simple observation to coronal modeling has become much greater with the arrival of results from Ulysses and SOHO. High speed wind is relatively smooth and uniform (Ulysses) but the coronal holes from which it comes contain highly filamented flows that expand in area by factors of two to sevenfold between the solar surface and 10 solar radii (SOHO). Different models of the relationship between solar and interplanetary magnetic fields produce similar predictions and are still being reconciled. Slow wind seems to come from the boundaries of streamers (Ulysses) by a process which is even less well understood. Again, there are different ideas for the leakage of slow wind from streamers but these models are quickly becoming highly constrained by new data on composition in the core and boundaries of streamers (SOHO). Perhaps the most significant conclusion is that there is a changing paradigm for the processes governing solar wind acceleration and energy flow, one that requires the presence of filamented, energetic, transient flows in a low-beta plasma close to the Sun that become mixed to produce the evolving turbulent MHD plasma that Is observed in the interplanetary medium.