Sacramento Peak Solar Brightness Temperature Maps, 1964-1973

Once-daily synoptic maps of solar brightness temperature on a 25x21 grid provide a decade-long view of the Sun's activity. The National Solar Observatory at Sacramento Peak collected this data from January 1964 to July 1973. Stanford University later provided the dataset to NASA's Distributed Active Archive Center.

Use Cases

• Analyze long-term solar activity cycles based on daily brightness temperature maps.
• Study the evolution of solar features like sunspots based on synoptic grid data.
• Train or validate models for solar radio emission based on 9.1cm wavelength observations.
• Correlate historical solar brightness with other contemporaneous astronomical records.

Strengths

• Daily observations provide consistent temporal coverage for nearly a decade.
• Data is structured on a defined 25x21 spatial grid for each map.
• Collected by the authoritative National Solar Observatory at Sacramento Peak.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Last updated 1973-07-31 23:59:59.999000; freshness should be verified.
• Row count and file formats are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

National Solar Observatory at Sacramento Peak, provided via Stanford University to NASA.

Collection Method

Observational data collected to create once-daily synoptic solar maps.

Time Range

January 1964 to July 1973

Freshness

1973-07-31 23:59:59.999000

Geography

Solar observations (non-terrestrial)