Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 May 2016
Stellar coronae cannot be spatially resolved, and yet stellar coronae are likely to exhibit a similar amount of structure as the solar corona. Currently, the only way to infer structure from spatially unresolved data is to look for rotational modulation of the X-ray emission or eclipses in the case of binary systems. I will discuss some of the observations obtained and critically review the methods used to infer structure from these data. Particular emphasis will be placed on the ill-conditioned nature of the inversion problem, that makes it next to impossible to infer the possibly three-dimensional structure of stellar coronae.