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The solar program of the Astronomical Observatory of Madrid started in 1876. For ten solar cycles, observations were made in this institution to determine sunspot numbers and areas. The program was completed in 1986. The resulting data have…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-22 A. J. P. Aparicio , J. M. Vaquero , V. M. S. Carrasco , M. C. Gallego

Kanzelh\"ohe Observatory (KSO) was founded during World War II by the "Deutsche Luftwaffe" (German Airforces) as one station of a network of observatories, which should provide information on solar activity in order to better assess the…

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics · Physics 2016-04-13 Werner Pötzi , Astrid M. Veronig , Manuela Temmer , Dietmar Baumgartner , Heinrich Freislich , Heinz Strutzmann

Most of our knowledge about the Sun's activity cycle arises from sunspot observations over the last centuries since telescopes have been used for astronomy. The German astronomer Gustav Sp\"orer observed almost daily the Sun from 1861 until…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2015-11-11 Andrea Diercke , Rainer Arlt , Carsten Denker

We use sunspot group observations from the Royal Greenwich Observatory (RGO) to investigate the effects of intercalibrating data from observers with different visual acuities. The tests are made by counting the number of groups $R_B$ above…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2016-03-23 M. Lockwood , M. J Owens , L. Barnard , I. G. Usoskin

On a centennial timescale, solar activity was quantified based on records of instrumental sunspot observations. This article briefly discusses several aspects of the recent archival investigations of historical sunspot records in the 17th…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2025-02-21 Hisashi Hayakawa

Sunspot numbers provide the longest continuous record of solar activity and remain a key index for heliophysical research and space-weather applications. Standard sunspot determination relies on visual inspection and algorithmic…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2026-03-25 Fabian C. Quintero-Pareja , Diederik A. Montano-Burbano , Santiago Quintero-Pareja , D. Sierra-Porta

More than 70 years ago it was recognised that ionospheric F2-layer critical frequencies $foF2$ had a strong relationship to sunspot number. Using historic datasets from the Slough and Washington ionosondes, we evaluate the best statistical…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2016-03-23 M. Lockwood , C. J. Scott , M. J. Owens , L. Barnard , D. M. Willis

Waldmeier in 1947 introduced a weighting (on a scale from 1 to 5) of the sunspot count made at Zurich and its auxiliary station Locarno, whereby larger spots were counted more than once. This counting method inflates the relative sunspot…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2015-07-07 Leif Svalgaard , Marco Cagnotti , Sergio Cortesi

The use of the spotless days to predict the future solar activity is here revised based on the new version of the sunspot number index with a 24-month filter. Data from Solar Cycle (SC) 10 are considered because from this solar cycle the…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2017-11-15 V. M. S. Carrasco , J. M. Vaquero , M. C. Gallego

Total solar irradiance variations, about 0.1% between solar activity maximum and minimum, are available from accurate satellite measurements since 1978 and thus do not provide useful information on longer-term secular trends. Recently,…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2012-05-23 S. Sello

Waldmeier [1971] found a very tight relationship between the F10.7 solar radio flux and the sunspot number and suggested using the flux for an objective calibration of the sunspot number. He suggested that if this relationship changed later…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2010-08-31 Leif Svalgaard

New sunspot data composites, some of which are radically different in the character of their long-term variation, are evaluated over the interval 1845-2014. The method commonly used to calibrate historic sunspot data, relative to modern-day…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2016-06-22 Mike Lockwood , Mathew J. Owens , Luke A. Barnard , Ilya G. Usoskin

Relative Sunspot Number is one of the major parameters for the study of long-term solar activity. The automatic calculation of the Relative Sunspot Number is more stable and accurate as compared to manual methods. In this paper, we propose…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2024-01-18 Cui Zhao , Shangbin Yang , Tingmei Wang , Haiyan Zhao , Shiyuan Liu , Fangyuan He , Zhengkun Hu

Sunspot numbers are important tracers of historical solar activity. They are important in the prediction of oncoming solar maximum, in the design of lifetimes of space assets, and in assessing the extent of solar-radiation impact on the…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2016-02-26 K. S. Balasubramaniam , T. W. Henry

A revision is presented of the sunspot observations made by Charles Malapert from 1618 to 1626, studying several documentary sources that include those observations. The revised accounting of the group numbers recorded by Malapert for that…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2021-03-18 V. M. S. Carrasco , M. C. Gallego , J. Villalba Álvarez , J. M. Vaquero

We identify several pairs of 'equivalent' observers defined as observers with equal or nearly equal 'observational threshold' areas of sunspots on the solar disk as determined by the 'Active Days Fraction' method [e.g. Willamo et al.,…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2017-09-26 Leif Svalgaard , Kenneth H. Schatten

The distribution of the sunspot group size (area) and its dependence on the level of solar activity is studied. It is shown that the fraction of small groups is not constant but decreases with the level of solar activity so that high solar…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2016-11-23 I. G. Usoskin , G. A. Kovaltsov , T. Chatzistergos

We create a continuous series of daily and monthly hemispheric sunspot numbers (HSNs) from 1874 to 2020, which will be continuously expanded in the future with the HSNs provided by SILSO. Based on the available daily measurements of…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2023-01-06 Astrid M. Veronig , Shantanu Jain , Tatiana Podladchikova , Werner Poetzi , Frederic Clette

Detailed models of the solar cycle require information about the starting time and rise time as well as the shape and amplitude of the cycle. However, none of these models includes a discussion of the variations in the length of the cycle,…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-05-23 Michael L. Rogers , Mercedes T. Richards , Donald St. P. Richards

Samuel Heinrich Schwabe made 8486 drawings of the solar disk with sunspots in the period from November 5, 1825 to December 29, 1867. We have measured sunspot sizes and heliographic positions on digitized images of these drawings. A total of…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-16 R. Arlt , R. Leussu , N. Giese , K. Mursula , I. G. Usoskin