Paper presented at the EGS General Assembly, 21-25, April, 1997, Vienna, Austria
Coronal heating and solar wind acceleration are basically unsolved questions in solar physics. Element and isotope composition measurements in the interplanetary medium can provide important information about the origin of the solar wind. The results of such measurements will give us important information about the physical processes which transport the neutral atoms from the photosphere via the chromosphere to the corona of the Sun and how they get ionized and accelerated. The Charge, Element, Isotope Analysis System (CELIAS) on the SOHO satellite is designed to study the composition of the solar wind and of solar energetic particles. It consists of three time-of-flight spectrometers to perform composition measurements. The CELIAS solar wind mass spectrometer MTOF (MASS Time-of-Flight) has a very high time- and mass resolution and is therefore an excellent tool for isotope abundance measurements. We will present first results on the abundances of Magnesium isotopes measured in the solar wind.