The prominence-corona interface compared with the chromosphere-corona transition region
The intensities of 52 optically thin EUV emission lines formed at temperatures of 350,000 to 2.2 million K in nine hedgerow prominences observed at the limb are compared with the intensities of the same lines formed within network cells at the center of the solar disk in order to compare the prominence-corona interface (PC) with the chromosphere-corona transition region (CC). It is found for all nine prominences that the ratio of the intensity of a line measured in a cell to that in a prominence decreases with increasing temperature approximately as the -0.6 power of temperature. This ratio is used as the basis for comparing the PC with the CC in the framework of two different geometries wherein the prominence consists of one or more identical fully resolved slabs or threads in the line of sight or contains one or more identical unresolved cylindrical threads. It is concluded that three effects may contribute to the systematic difference between the PC and the CC: (1) the pressure within the PC might increase outward; (2) the temperature gradient within the PC might increase more slowly with temperature than in the CC; and (3) the unresolved internal geometry of a prominence can directly explain some, but not all, of the systematic difference.