The standard solar model was so reliable that it could predict the existence of the massive neutrino. Helioseismology measurements were so precise that they could determine the depth of the convection zone. This agreement between theory and observation was the envy of all astrophysics -until recently when sophisticated three-dimensional hydrodynamic calculations of the solar atmosphere reduced the metal content by a factor of almost two. Antia & Basu (2005) suggested that a higher value of the solar neon abundance, A N e /A O = 0.52, would resolve this controversy. Drake & Testa (2005) presented strong evidence in favor of this idea from a sample of 21 Chandra stars with enhanced values of the neon abundance, A N e /A O = 0.41. In this paper, we have analyzed solar active region spectra from the archive of the Flat Crystal Spectrometer on Solar Maximum Mission, a NASA mission from the 1980s, as well as full-Sun spectra from the pioneering days of X-ray astronomy in the 1960s. These data seem consistent with the standard neon-to-oxygen abundance value, A N e /A O = 0.15 (Grevesse & Sauval 1998). If these results prove to be correct, than the enhanced-neon hypothesis will not resolve the current controversy.

We have selected a sample of 10 coronal loops that were clearly visible in the 171 Å passband of the SOHO EIT, five on the limb and five on the disk. Our analysis was limited to 171/195/284 image '' triplets ''-observations taken when the instrument cycles through the different passbands during routine operations. This cycle takes only a few minutes, so each of these nonflaring structures did not change significantly during the cycle. We chose five pixels along each loop and five carefully selected background pixels. Temperature analysis was done four different ways: (1) standard EIT analysis on the five loop pixels with no background subtraction; (2) constant background subtraction for each EIT image; (3) pixel pair background subtraction; and (4) radial background array subtraction (this method works only for loops observed above the limb). Each method produced two estimates of temperature for each loop pixel, one from the 171 : 195 ratio and the second for the 195 : 284 ratio. Both ratios produced loops with a uniform temperature, but each ratio results in a statistically different temperature value, perhaps indicating that the plasma along the line of sight was not isothermal. Background subtraction did not affect the EIT temperature analysis, i.e., the results were the same with and without background subtraction. The results for loops on the limb were '' cleaner;'' i.e., had less scatter, than for loops on the disk. Finally, we did a similar temperature analysis with five randomly chosen pixels for each data set. The results were the same as for the loop pixels: two statistically different, uniform temperature '' structures.'' These findings indicate that EIT ratio analysis does not generate a physically meaningful value for the electron temperature.

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The 1998 April 20 spectral line data from the Coronal Diagnostic Spectrometer on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory show a coronal loop on the solar limb. Our original analysis of these data showed that the plasma was multithermal, both along the length of the loop and along the line of sight. However, more recent results by other authors indicate that background subtraction might change these conclusions, so we consider the effect of background subtraction on our analysis. We show emission measure (EM) loci plots of three representative pixels: loop apex, upper leg, and lower leg. Comparisons of the original and background-subtracted intensities show that the EM loci are more tightly clustered after background subtraction, but that the plasma is still not well represented by an isothermal model. Our results taken together with those of other authors indicate that a variety of temperature structures may be present within loops.