In this issue of the bulletin, Mike Hill has contributed an eBook review as part of his SID report below. The book, "How to Build Your own Radio Telescope" should be of interest to those doing radio solar flare detection.

I received a wonderful letter and photos (yes, in the real mail) from Ernest Richardson of Swinton, England who was observing at the right time on July 10th with his Solar Max-40. He reports seeing several flares erupt. This was the first time he witnessed a new flare erupt during an observing session. Congrats Ernest.

Remember to send me any solar drawings, SID flares or photos for me to include here.

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

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)

July was a slow month for SID Activity characterized primarily by a burst of activity between the 7th and 11th of July due to sunspot region 963. There were 15 correlated SID events recorded by our observers ( a thinner than usual group this month.) Correspondingly the GOES-12 satellite recorded only 96 X-Ray flares, all of them being B-Class or C-Class events. 89 of these occurred between the 7th and 11th.

Last month I was contacted by an individual who does SID monitoring and has written a great eBook on the subject. I have posted a link to his website on the AAVSO SID Program web page in the "Additional Resources" section. Soon after hearing about it I obtained a copy of this book, my first eBook, and I have been very impressed with it. The author has put together a comprehensive single source of information covering all the aspects of SID monitoring. It starts out with some basics about the sun, the causes of the activity we monitor, and how we are able to monitor it. Construction of a VLF receiver and matching loop antenna are covered very thoroughly complete with pictures, schematics and parts lists. Lastly he covers the measurement of signals using a freeware program called Spectrum Lab and goes into detail on how to use this with a standard sound card to act as your A/D input and data processor. There are a number of useful appendices including a set of instructions for customizing the operation of Spectrum Lab for generating files that will easily import into the shareware program SIDGraph which a number of observers use regularly. I do recommend the book. It is a great reference to have on hand and might even inspire you to do more in the area of Radio Astronomy which is, after all, the kind of astronomy we are doing. The link to the book can be found on the AAVSO SID page under the heading of "Additional SID Resources".

Solar Flare Summary Based on GOES-12 Data

Sunspot Data

American Relative Sunspot Numbers(Ra) for July 2007 [boldface = maximum, minimum] Day N Raw Mean Ra 1 35 22 16 2 29 15 11 3 26 14 10 4 25 13 10 5 28 13 10 6 31 13 9 7 30 10 8 8 34 15 10 9 26 21 15 10 21 25 19 11 27 24 18 12 30 26 19 13 28 37 28 14 29 36 27 15 35 34 26 16 36 28 20 17 36 16 12 18 30 14 10 19 31 10 7 20 27 0 0 21 29 0 0 22 35 0 0 23 29 0 0 24 36 0 0 25 35 0 0 26 31 0 0 27 33 0 0 28 31 13 9 29 31 13 9 30 28 12 9 31 35 2 1 Means 30.5 13.7 10.1 Total No. of Observers: 51 Total No. of Observations: 947

July 2007 Sunspot Observers AJV J. Alonso 27 ARAG G. Araujo 31 BARH H. Barnes 14 BATR R. Battaiola 21 BMF M. Boschat 19 BRAR R. Branch 31 BROB R. Brown 29 BVC A. Buck 31 CHAG G. Morales 31 CKB B. Cudnik 23 CLZ L. Corp 11 CNT D. Chantiles 10 COMT T. Compton 18 DEJV J. van Delft 21 DGP G. Dyck 17 DUBF F. Dubois 28 FLET T. Fleming 25 FUJK K. Fujimori 20 GFT F. Gobet 6 HALB B. Halls 6 HAYK K. Hay 16 HMQ M. Harris 6 JENS S. Jenner 3 KAPJ J. Kaplan 20 KNJS J. & S. Knight 10 KROL L. Krozel 1 KUZM M. Kuzmin 13 LARJ J. Larriba 20 LERM M. Lerman 17 MCE E. Mochizuki 16 MCHL L. McHenry 4 MEU E. Mason 7 MILJ J. MILLER 20 OATS S. Oatney 31 OBSO IPS Observatory 15 PEKT R. Pektas 31 RICE E. C. Richardson 17 RITA A. Ritchie 19 SCHG G. Scholl 9 SIMC C. Simpson 12 STEM G. Stemmler 21 STQ N. Stoikidis 31 SUZM M. Suzuki 22 TAKH H.Takuma 18 TESD D. Teske 27 TJV J. Temprano 17 URBP P. Urbanski 28 VARG A. Vargas 16 VIDD D. Vidican 28 WILW W. Wilson 28 WRP R. Wheeler 5

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

10 cm Solar Flux and American Relative Sunspot Numbers (Ra) for July 2007 (10cm Source: http://www.drao.nrc.ca/icarus)

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