Table of Contents
Solar Observing
I’ve been solar observing as often as possible since May 2006. I started doing this when I decided it would be interesting to use my Solarscope to do sunspot counts and to contribute the results to the Society for Popular Astronomy‘s Solar section.
The following is information I find handy to keep in one place regarding this activity.
Calculating the Sunspot Number
The calculation for the sunspot number is 
where:
is the relative sunspot number (the thing we’re working out).
is a constant that relates to the type of equipment used. Currently, for my own observations, this is 1.
is the number of sunspot groups (active areas) visible.
is the total number of sunspots counted.
