Two Types of Coronal Bright Points in the 24-th Cycle of Solar Activity

Abstract

We applied an automatic program for identification of coronal bright points (CBPs) to the data obtained by SOHO/EIT observations taken at the wavelength 195 Å, in the time interval from the end of the 23rd to the early 24th solar cycle. We studied the total number of CBPs and its variations at the beginning of the given cycle of solar activity, so that the development of the solar activity could be predicted with the use of CBPs. For a primary reference point for the 24th solar cycle, we took the emergence of a high-latitude sunspot with the reversed polarity, which appeared in January, 2008. We show that the observed number of CBPs reaches the highest point around the minimum of the solar activity, which in turn may result from the effect of visibility. The minimum solar activity at this time provides the opportunity to register the number of CBPs with the highest accuracy, with its uniform latitudinal distribution. We also study the properties of CBPs in a new 24th cycle of solar activity. It is shown that variations in the cyclic curve of the number of coronal bright points associated with variations in the solar activity, for the latitudes of the quiet Sun to be anticorrelation characteristic changes in the number CBPs to the solar activity, and the observational data are for the regions of active formations on the Sun almost identical on character on the equatorial latitude, but this have lightly expressed character in high-latitude zone. To explain the cyclic curves of variation in the number of coronal bright points in connection with the solar cycle in different latitudinal zones, we suggest a hypothesis of the existence of two types of coronal bright points: those associated with the quiet corona and those related to active formations.