Gema Araujo caught AR988 on April 1, 2008 in H-alpha and Calcium-K at 09:15UT and 08:39UT respectively. Unfortunately the April Fools joke was on us, since that day had the highest sunspot count for the entire month. Just when we thought we might be getting some activity, it has tapered off again. The good news is we are finally better and warmer spring weather for the northern hemisphere allowing more opportunities to check out the sun. A quick peek with a portable scope at lunch also feeds the solar habit. Today's quick lunch with a PST (H-alpha) showed a few prominences but unfortunately no spots. We're pretty lucky at this solar minimum to have several affordable H-alpha scopes around to view our local star, and also share those views with co-workers.

Don't forget to submit your images, drawings and SID plots for me to include in the bulletin.

Sudden Ionospheric Disturbance Report

Michael Hill, SID Analyst 114 Prospect St Marlborough, MA 01752 USA noatak@aol.com

Sudden Ionospheric Disturbances (SID)
Recorded During April 2008
(Analysis performed by Michael Hill, SID Analyst)

Date	Max	Imp
No SIDS detected

Importance rating: Duration

-1: <19

1: 19-25

1+: 26-32

2: 33-45

2+: 46-85

3: 86-125

3+: >125

Observer	Code
A Clerkin	A29
D Toldo	A52
P King	A80
M Hill	A87
L Anderson	A91
R battaiola	A96
J Wallace	A97
M King	A99
F Steyn	A102
L Observatory	A107
P Mortfield	A108
M Suhovecky	A115
L Loudet	A118

The events listed above meet at least one of the following criteria

1. Event reported by two or more observers within +/- 5 minutes
2. Event matched to GOES-8 XRA event to within +/- 15 minutes and event time < 1000 UT
3. Reported by observer with a high quality rating > 8 (scale 1-10)

April was another very slow month. I only had one observer send in a single event and that turned out not to correlate. So the count is once again zero. We all keep hoping for a change in activity to signal a return to the upward trend but this minimum is certainly lasting a long time. The sun is definitely in a quiet spell for a while now. There were not even that many X-Ray events as seen by the Goes-12 satellite. There were only 17 this month and all but two were B Class events. The other two were C-Class. Most of the activity was at the beginning of the month. Thanks to all who continue to submit data. Your observations, as always, are appreciated.

Solar Flare Summary Based on GOES-12 Data

Sunspot Data

American Relative Sunspot Numbers(Ra) for April 2008 [boldface = maximum, minimum] Day N Raw Mean Ra 1 27 25 18 2 36 15 11 3 31 13 9 4 29 4 3 5 35 0 0 6 35 0 0 7 30 0 0 8 30 0 0 9 27 0 0 10 29 0 0 11 32 0 0 12 33 0 0 13 37 1 1 14 34 4 3 15 38 1 0 16 39 0 0 17 28 0 0 18 28 0 0 19 35 3 1 20 37 1 0 21 33 0 0 22 31 11 8 23 30 12 9 24 33 4 2 25 32 0 0 26 33 0 0 27 35 0 0 28 29 0 0 29 37 0 0 30 35 0 0 Means 32.6 3.1 2.2 Total No. of Observers: 60 Total No. of Observations: 978

April 2008 Sunspot Observers AAP A. Abbott 11 AJV J. Alonso 17 ARAG G. Araujo 30 BARH H. Barnes 6 BATR R. Battaiola 3 BERJ J. Berdejo 11 BMF M. Boschat 17 BOSB B. Bose 14 BRAB B. Branchett 30 BRAD D. Branchett 17 BRAR R. Branch 26 BROB R. Brown 20 BVC A. Buck 30 CHAG G. Morales 27 CKB B. Cudnik 24 CLZ L. Corp 8 CNT D. Chantiles 11 COMT T. Compton 16 CR T. Cragg 26 DEJV J. van Delft 18 DGP G. Dyck 4 DUBF F. Dubois 22 FERJ J. Fernandez 15 FLET T. Fleming 26 FUJK K. Fujimori 22 GFT F. Gobet 9 HALB B. Halls 8 HAYK K. Hay 18 HMQ M. Harris 16 KAPJ J. Kaplan 16 KNJS J. & S. Knight 11 KROL L. Krozel 2 KUZM M. Kuzmin 3 LARJ J. Larriba 17 MARE E. Mariani 5 MARJ J. Maranon 30 MCE E. Mochizuki 17 MEU E. Mason 2 MILJ J. Miller 8 MMI M. Moeller 24 OATS S. Oatney 26 OBSO IPS Observatory 16 RICE E. C. Richardson 10 RITA A. Ritchie 22 SCGL G. Schott 20 SDP D. Sharples 1 SIMC C. Simpson 19 STEF G. Stefanopoulis 5 STEM G. Stemmler 19 STQ N. Stoikidis 21 SUZM M. Suzuki 22 SZUM M. Szulc 21 TESD D. Teske 25 TJV J. Temprano 15 URBP P. Urbanski 18 VARG A. Vargas 23 VIDD D. Vidican 10 WILW W. Wilson 24 WRP R. Wheeler 4 YESH H. Yesilyaprak 20

Reporting addresses: Sunspot Reports Email: solar@aavso.org Postal Mail: AAVSO, 49 Bay State Rd. Cambridge, MA, 02138 Fax: 617-354-0665 SID Flare Reports Email: noatak@aol.com Postal Mail: Mike Hill, 114 Prospect St., Marlboro, MA, 01752

Smoothed Mean Sunspot Numbers (Rsm) from January 2000 to October 2007 (Waldmeier method).

10 cm Solar Flux and American Relative Sunspot Numbers (Ra) for April 2008 (10cm Source: http://www.drao.nrc.ca/icarus)