Observing solar wind turbulence in the corona with ground-based radio telescopes

When point-like galactic and extragalactic radio sources are observed through the solar corona by ground-based radio telescopes, plasma density fluctuations in the turbulent solar wind scatter these photons, leading to an observed broadening and/or elongation of such sources. By observing this broadening for several sources, over several days, we can get information about e.g. the wavenumber and radial dependence of solar wind density fluctuations at very small scales (~30m - 8km) inside the Alfven radius, thereby capturing details of the turbulence dissipation range. Here, we present very initial results of such a study with the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa (being, of course, a precursor to the much larger Square Kilometer Array, SKA), discuss the preliminary results, and compare these with theoretical estimates and previous observations.