Center to limb variation of the intensity of the photospheric faculae

Center to limb variation of the excess brightness of photospheric facular granules was observed at 530 nm with a balloon-borne telescope of 10 cm aperture. Facular granules are found to be 9.2% and 16.2% brighter than the adjacent quiet region at cos = 0.65 and 0.50 respectively, being the angle between the Sun's normal and the line of sight. This observation, together with our earlier result (Hirayama, 1978), leads to facular models which are 600 K hotter than the photosphere if the diameter of facular granules is assumed to be 600 km, and 1000 K hotter if 150 km is assumed instead. It was also found that the soft X-ray bright points as observed with the Skylab do not correspond spatially to the photospheric facular granules near the polar region.