About - Classification Values after Malde
Observing the increasing sunspotactivity in
Solar Cycle 21, I always had thoughts on how to determine a better observing value for the
amateur. This was mainly due to my new interest in plotting the Solar Flux, at that
time observed from Ottawa in Canada. I felt that the solar flux appeared like
measuring the temper of the raging sun, sometimes in quite a good mood, while at other
times mad with anger.
It was then that I cast my eyes on the 7 Zürich-letter codes that now have been used for
more than 100 years. Dr. Patrick S. McIntosh revised them to his 60 letter
Zürich/McIntosh-classification system, published in 1973, and are daily used by the
observatories worldwide.
In July 1978 I started puzzling with the letters, finding that I had to study the
behaviour of all the apparent 60 classes. They were investigated for their ability
of survival on the solar disk, their structure and complexity and also study the typical
lifestyles from hundreds of sunspotgroups. This took me just about 3 years to
complete satisfactory.
Then I had, for three years puzzled with attaching numbers to these three-letter codes, so
that one can do calculations with them. In late 1997 I even made CV-numbers out of
the official USAF-observations from 1971 to 1997. The results you may see somewhere
else at these pages.
On the 15th of August 1981 I declared the system "Classification Values" for
"official".
The system was tried out and published in the norwegian "Amatĝrastronomen", and
the first two other norwegian members joined in the same year, 1981.
In the summer of 1982, I had contact with Dr. Rainer Beck in Bonn, Germany who was greatly
involved with the "vereinigung der Sternfreunde, fachgruppe Sonne", in Germany.
I wrote an article in english sometime later and he kindly introduced the system
there in late 1985. The first german and swiss observers came in 1986. Since
then the members observing the CV has grown from a few observers hence performing a modest
number of observations a year, and up to today, when we are 80 observers and hopefully
passing the treshold of 7000 observations this year, 2001!
Thank you, every CV-observer who read this, for believing in the Ultimate Way of Observing
the Sun, the Classification Values!
Oh, Helios, The Sun of ours; Our Lifepreserving Source of Light!
May you shine upon all of us, not only at Day, but also at Night,
telling all creatures, every living spirit, every man on Earth,
to hold peace with each other, this thought God gave birth!
Kjell Inge Malde, founder of CV, Tuesday, 16th June 1998,
revised 15.01.01