Related papers: Historical Sunspot Observations: A Review

In 1844 Schwabe discovered that the number of sunspots increased and decreased over a period of about 11 years, that variation became known as the sunspot cycle. Almost eighty years later, Hale described the nature of the Sun's magnetic…

The paper presents the results of the analysis of the geometric characteristics of sunspots for the period of 19-24 cycles of activity. The shape of sunspots was studied on the basis of the method of normalization of images of sunspots to…

Sunspots are a canonical marker of the Sun's internal magnetic field which flips polarity every ~22-years. The principal variation of sunspots, an ~11-year variation in number, modulates the amount of magnetic field that pierces the solar…

The long-standing disparity between the sunspot number record and the Hoyt and Schatten (1998, H&S) Group Sunspot Number series was initially resolved by the Clette et al. (2014) revision of the sunspot number and the group number series.…

The flows in and around sunspots are rich in detail. Starting with the Evershed flow along low-lying flow channels, which are cospatial with the horizontal penumbral magnetic fields, Evershed clouds may continue this motion at the periphery…

Recent research has demonstrated that the number of sunspots per group ('active region') has been decreasing over the last two or three solar cycles and that the classical Relative Sunspot Number (SSN) no longer is a good representation of…

The recalibration of the sunspot number series, the primary long-term record of the solar cycle, requires the recovery of the entire collection of raw sunspot counts collected by the Zurich Observatory for the production of this index…

The variable Sun is the most likely candidate for natural forcing of past climate change on time scales of 50 to 1000 years. Evidence for this understanding is that the terrestrial climate correlates positively with solar activity. During…

As my own work on the Sun's magnetic field started exactly 50 years ago at Crimea in the USSR, I have been a participant in the field during nearly half the time span since Hale's discovery in 1908 of magnetic fields in sunspots. The…

The sunspot position from Greenwich Photoheliographic Results (GPR), US Air Force Solar Optical Observing Network and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (USAF/NOAA), and Debrecen Photoheliographic Data (DPD) data bases in the…

The so-called solar cycle is generally characterized by the quasi-periodic oscillatory evolution of the photospheric spots number. This quasi-periodic pattern has always been an intriguing question. Several physical models were proposed to…

Sunspot observations and counting are carried out at the Specola Solare Ticinese in Locarno since 1957 when it was built as an external observing station of the Zurich observatory. When in 1980 the data center responsibility was transferred…

Although the Sun's polar magnetic fields are thought to provide important clues for understanding the 11-year sunspot cycle, including the observed variations of its amplitude and period, the current database of high-quality polar-field…

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…

This note deals with a multivariate stochastic approach to forecast the behaviour of a cyclic time series. Particular attention is devoted to the problem of the prediction of time behaviour of sunspot numbers for the current 23th cycle. The…

The focus of this study is to reveal the reason behind a scale problem detected around 1849 in the historical version of the International Sunspot Number Series, i.e. version 1 (Leussu et al, Astronomy and Astrophysics, 559, A28, 2013;…

Sunspot numbers form a comprehensive, long-duration proxy of solar activity and have been used numerous times to empirically investigate the properties of the solar cycle. A number of correlations have been discovered over the 24 cycles for…

Knowing the variability of total solar irradiance (TSI) at the top of the atmosphere is crucial for specifying solar influence to climate variability. Satellite measured TSI data are available only for the last 32 years. But there is an…

The observation that the shadows of objects change during the course of the day and also for a fixed time during a year led curious minds to realize that the Sun could be used as a timekeeper. However, the daily motion of the Sun has some…

Early telescopic observations of sunspots were conducted with instruments of relatively small aperture. These instruments also suffered from a higher level of scattered light, and the human eye served as a "detector". The eye's ability to…