The first Whole Sun Month campaign (WSM1) (August 8-September 10, 1996) provided an opportunity for observers and modelers to work together to describe the 3-d morphology, plasma properties, and magnetic field of the global corona, and connect it structurally to in situ observations. Many of those involved wrote these results up for a special issue of JGR, and presented them at a special session of the Spring, 1998 AGU. Because of the success of this first campaign, a third Whole Sun Month Campaign (WSM2), has been planned for August 18 - September 14, 1999 (Carrington Rotation 1953). (The Second WSM campaign was shortened to a two week Whole Sun Fortnight due to the unfortunate temporary loss of communications with the SOHO satellite.)
Since the sun will be in the ascending phase of the solar cycle, we expect some significant differences in the global corona from the (mostly) simple solar minimum corona seen during WSM1. The first campaign focussed on stable, very large scale coronal structures and their connections to the solar wind. While we will continue to consider the "global" corona shaped by a quasi-static background magnetic field, new questions arise due to the increase in the temporal and spatial variation of coronal structures.
If you would like to be involved in the analysis of observations from WSM3, please contact Doug Biesecker or Sarah Gibson. The original planning home page can be referred to find out the background on observations taken, and (via the links to the various Joint Observing Proposals) give contact information for people already involved. You are encouraged to contact each other and coordinate observations where appropriate. A page of more up-to-date targetting information and examples of data is also available.