TIMING ACCURACY FOR THE SIMPLE PLANAR PROPAGATION OF MAGNETIC-FIELD STRUCTURES IN THE SOLAR-WIND

Results from a correlation analysis of Wind and IMP 8 magnetometer dat a for a total of 543 two hour periods covering Jan-Jul 1995 were analy zed to determine that: (1) the timing accuracy Delta tau for advecting solar wind magnetic field structures goes as (d(per)/d(par)).tau(con) where dp,, is the spacecraft separation along the Sun-Earth line, d(p er) is the transverse separation, and tau(con) is the predicted convec tion lag time, (2) ''good'' correlation time periods (peak correlation coefficient > 0.80) are about twice as likely at solar maximum than a t solar minimum, (3) geometry affects timing accuracy more than any pr opagation of features with respect to the solar wind, and (4) there is a ''high'' probability (greater than predicted by a Gaussian distribu tion) of ''very bad'' (/d(par)Delta tau/d(per)tau(con)/ > 3) timing ag reement due to the long tail on the probability distribution.