Agora – Historical events and observations

Rediscovering the observations of solar prominences from 1906 to 1957 recorded at the Madrid Astronomical Observatory

¹ Departamento de Física, Universidad de Extremadura, 06006 Badajoz, Spain
² Instituto Universitario de Investigación del Agua, Cambio Climático y Sostenibilidad (IACYS), Universidad de Extremadura, 06006 Badajoz, Spain
³ Earth Remote Sensing Laboratory (EaRSLab) and Institute of Earth Sciences – ICT (Polo de Évora), Instituto de Investigação e Formação Avançada (IIFA), Universidade de Évora, 7000-671 Évora, Portugal
⁴ Departamento de Física, Universidad de Extremadura, 06800 Mérida, Spain

^* Corresponding author: vmscarrasco@unex.es

Received: 20 September 2022
Accepted: 30 January 2023

Abstract

The Madrid Astronomical Observatory implemented a solar observation program from 1876 to 1986. In addition to sunspots, the observers at this observatory recorded other solar features such as prominences. In this work, we have consulted the documentary sources of the Madrid Astronomical Observatory (the information is not digitally available), digitized the records of the observers on the annual number of prominences, and constructed a homogeneous series of the total and hemispheric annual number of prominences with heights of 25″ and more for the period 1906–1957. To evaluate the quality of the data and assess their potential, we have compared the Madrid prominence series with the number of prominences recorded by the Astronomical Observatory of the University of Coimbra and other time series such as the sunspot number index, solar radio flux at 10.7 cm, and sunspot areas. We have also analyzed the hemispheric prominence numbers and the asymmetry index. We obtained the strongest correlation between Madrid and Coimbra prominence series (r = 0.7), whereas the correlations between the Madrid prominence series and the other solar activity time series are similar (r ≈ 0.6). In addition, we found that the correlation coefficient between the Madrid prominence series and the sunspot number is lower than that from the Coimbra prominence series and the sunspot number. We suggest that these differences are a consequence of the way prominences were counted in the Madrid Astronomical Observatory.