Distribution of lifetimes for coronal soft X-ray bright points

The lifetimes of all compact emission features visible on three sets of high time resolution soft X-ray images have been measured. The spectrum of lifetimes is found to be heavily weighted toward short lifetimes. The number of features present on the disk which live 2-48 hours is at least ten times as great as the number living more than 48 hours. The distribution of lifetimes can be fit in all three cases by a four-parameter function N(t) = Nsub(s)exp(-t/tausub(s) + Nsub(L)exp(-t/tausub(L), with tausub(s) = 8.7 +- 0.2, tausub(L)=35+-4 and Nsub(s)approximately 10 Nsub(L). Features living two days or less have a very broad latitude distribution whereas nearly all longer-lived features are found within 300 of the equator. The growth rates of long-lived points are the same to within approximately 20%, the major difference being that long-lived points continue to grow and generally reach larger sizes. (Auth.)