HR: 16:15h
AN: SP44A-04    [Abstracts]
TI: The Mass Properties of Coronal Mass Ejections: Evolution & Statistics
AU: * Vourlidas, A
EM: vourlidas@nrl.navy.mil
AF: Naval Research Laboratory, 4555 Overlook Ave, SW, Washington, DC 20375 United States
AU: Howard, R
EM: russ.howard@nrl.navy.mil
AF: Naval Research Laboratory, 4555 Overlook Ave, SW, Washington, DC 20375 United States
AB: A defining property of a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) is naturally its mass. The LASCO observations of 1000s of CMEs over the last 8 years allow us to constrain statistically the "typical" CME mass but also to examine its evolution as a function of time during each event. Such work could not be done in the past due to the lower cadence and instrument sensitivity. Our analysis of the CME mass properties has revealed some interesting and maybe unexpected results. For example, close to half of the observed CMEs seem to blend into the background before reaching 30 Rs. In this paper, we will discuss our findings for the LASCO CME sample from 1996 to 2004.
DE: 7509 Corona
DE: 7513 Coronal mass ejections
SC: Solar Physics Division - AAS [SP]
MN: 2005 Joint Assembly