A vast amount of useful and informative material relating to the appearance of the sun at different wavelengths, visual and instrumental observation, and analyses and records of sunspot data are available via the Internet. The list below is intended to provide the new observer with some initial points of contact with this resource. Some entries in the list present the full address required to get to a specific display or table. (One can always pare these back to the address of the homepage.) Others present only a homepage address from which the user can identify and branch to links of interest.
Observing Resources
- AAVSO Solar Observing Guide
- AAVSO Guidelines for Solar Observers
- The AAVSO Solar Observing and SID Monitoring Forum
- Sky & Telescope's A Solar Observing Refresher Course
- Stanford Solar Center's Observing the Sun for Yourself
- SunEntry - data entry and upload program
Solar Observatories/Satellite Views
Data and Information
- American Relative Sunspot Number (Ra) archive
- Explanation of solar indicies
- Solar-Terrestrial Physics Division of NGDC
- World Data Center for Sunspot Index
- NOAA Space Environment Center
- Sunspots and the Solar Cycle
- NASA Space Weather Information
Associations
- Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers (ALPO) then click "Solar Section"