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.  Monitoring of these observations and compared to CV-Helios Network's own observations are performed on a daily basis. 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 "Amatørastronomen", 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 now about 40 observers and we perform about 6000 observations per year!
I like to thank every CV-observer, any CV-member or any who find interest in reading this, and 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!
............ K. I. Malde 1998 ............

Kjell Inge Malde, founder of CV, Tuesday, 16th June 1998,
revised 06.11.17