A Comparison of the Red and Green Coronal Line Intensities at the 29 March 2006 and the 1 August 2008 Total Solar Eclipses: Considerations of the Temperature of the Solar Corona

During the total solar eclipse at Akademgorodok, Siberia, Russia, on 1 August 2008, we imaged the flash spectrum with a slitless spectrograph. We have spectroscopically determined the duration of totality, the epoch of the second and third contacts and the duration of the flash spectrum. Here we compare the 2008 flash spectra with those that we similarly obtained from the total solar eclipse of 29 March 2006, at Kastellorizo, Greece. Any changes of the intensity of the coronal emission lines, in particularly those of Fe x and Fe xiv , could give us valuable information about the temperature of the corona. The results show that the ionization state of the corona, as manifested especially by the Fe xiv emission line, was much weaker during the 2008 eclipse, indicating that following the long, inactive period during the solar minimum, there was a drop in the overall temperature of the solar corona.