Analysis and interpretation of soft X-ray photographs of coronal active regions taken with Fresnel zone plates

Soft X-ray photographs of the Sun taken at O vii 21.6 Å and in a spectral band ranging from 13.2 to 22.1 Å have been analysed in order to establish spatially resolved maps of temperature and emission measure for several active regions in the corona. The photographs were taken on 11 March, 1971, and on 2 March, 1972, with Fresnel zone plate cameras which were flown on ESRO and NRL sounding rockets.In Part I of this paper we first deal with those aspects of the instrumentation which are important for setting up a suitable image analysis procedure. We discuss the characteristics of the wavelength dependent image formation by zone plates combined with absorption filters. Results of the calibration of the X-ray film are given. Then we describe a specific iterative data reduction procedure and finally present the resulting maps of temperature and emission measure for a selected active region. In Part II corresponding results for further active regions will be given and discussed.