Origin of Streamer Material in the Outer Corona

We investigate the nature and origin of the outward-moving density inhomogeneities ("blobs") detected previously with the Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. The blobs are concentrated around the thin plasma layer that surrounds the heliospheric current sheet and that constitutes the outer streamer belt; they represent only a small, fluctuating component of the total density within the plasma sheet. As noted before in Sheeley et al., blobs are characterized by low speeds and are continually emitted from the elongated tips of helmet streamers at 3-4 R from Sun center. We suggest that both the blobs and the plasma sheet itself represent closed-field material injected into the solar wind as a result of footpoint exchanges between the stretched helmet-streamer loops and neighboring open field lines. The plasma sheet is thus threaded by newly reconnected, open magnetic field lines, which lend the white-light streamer belt its filamentary appearance. Since in situ observations at 1 AU show that the slow wind (with speeds below 500 km s−1) spreads over an angular extent much greater than the ≲3° width of the plasma sheet, we deduce that a major component of this wind must originate outside the helmet streamers (i.e., from just inside coronal holes).