Digitisation of Solar glass plate images

Digital Images of the Solar Disc and Limb 1903 -1942: The asset created will be a set of high resolution digital images of the solar disc in Ca II K light and H-alpha light which were taken daily at the Cambridge Solar Observatory between 1903 and 1942. The images are currently available on glass plates held by the UK Solar System Data Centre in its archive at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. This secures and improves accessibility to a valuable environmental data resource.

The UK Government has recognised the potential risks of a severe Space Weather event in the National Risk Register. Quantifying the 1 in 100 year risk of an extreme Space Weather Event is vital to managing risk and has direct policy impact.
(Hapgood 2011)
The asset created by digitising the solar images is a valuable addition to the historical record of solar activity which is of underlying importance to Space Weather research into the likelihood and severity of solar events. Better and quantified understanding of Space Weather risks is expected to lead to Innovation in engineering solutions and operational systems to predict events and mitigate effects. (Hapgood and Thomson 2010), (Cannon 2013).
This data set would be complementary to early ionospheric and geomagnetic records: ionospheric data currently available from the UK Solar System Data Centre including assets that could be created through a parallel bid to this call; and the digitised magnetograms at the British Geological Survey (BGS), another NERC asset.
Cannon P 2013 Extreme Space Weather: Impacts on Engineered Systems and Infrastructure, Royal Academy of Engineering http://bit.ly/16dLBCF
Hapgood MA 2011 Adv. Space Res. 47:12 2059-2072 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.asr.2010.02.007
Hapgood MA and Thomson A 2010 Space Weather: Its Impact on Earth and Implications for Business Lloyd's 360 Risk Insight (RAL Space) http://bit.ly/13G7dH0