ELECTRIC CURRENTS AND CORONAL HEATING IN NOAA ACTIVE-REGION 6952

We examine the spatial and temporal relationship between coronal struc tures observed with the soft X-ray telescope (SXT) on board the Yohkoh spacecraft and the vertical electric current density derived from pho tospheric vector magnetograms obtained using the Stokes Polarimeter at the Mees-Solar Observatory. We focus on a single active region: AR 69 52 which we observed on 7 days during 1991 December. For 11 independen t maps of the vertical electric current density co-aligned with non-fl aring X-ray images, we search for a morphological relationship between sites of high vertical current density in the photosphere and enhance d X-ray emission in the overlying corona. We find no compelling spatia l or temporal correlation between the sites of vertical current and th e bright X-ray structures in this active region.