A complex diagnostic of solar prominences

We use the polarimetric and intensity measurements of H and HeI D₃ lines in solar prominences to derive the true geometrical thickness for several quiescent prominences. The electron densities, derived from the collisional depolarization in H by Bommier et al. (1994), are used to evaluate the thickness from the emission measure. The emission measure was obtained from the theoretical correlation with the H integrated intensity, according to Gouttebroze, Heinzel, and Vial (1993). Theoretical electron densities obtained by latter authors are also compared with those of Bommier et al. (1994) and we find a very good agreement between them. The prominence geometrical thickness exhibits a relatively large range of values from about 100 km up to a few 10⁴ km. The plasma densities vary by almost two orders of magnitude in the observed structures, but the total column mass in the direction perpendicular to the prominence sheet seems to be fairly constant for the set of prominences studied.