Authors: J.T. Burkepile, A.J. Hundhausen, R.M. MacQueen, G. deToma, J.A.
Darnell, H.R. Gilbert
Affiliation: National Center for Atmospheric Research, High Altitude Observatory
We examine the acceleration of a set of Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) observed over a wide range of coronal scale heights with the goal of enhancing our understanding of the forces acting on CMEs. CME trajectories are determined from observations of the low corona from the Mauna Loa Solar Observatory (MLSO) combined with Large Angle Spectrometric Coronagraphs (LASCO) observations of the outer corona. CME acceleration is found to be greatest in the low corona despite the strong force of gravity in that region; a finding which is consistent with some previous studies. CME mass is determined for a subset of these events observed with sufficiently good signal-to-noise. We report on the rate of change of CME mass and kinetic energy with coronal height. Furthermore, we emphasize the importance of low coronal observations in detecting CME acceleration and determining accurate CME start times.