Delving into the Historical Ca II K Archive from the Kodaikanal Observatory: The Potential of the Most Recent Digitized Series

Abstract

Full-disc Ca II K photographic observations of the Sun carry direct information as regards the evolution of solar-plage regions for more than a century and are therefore a unique dataset for solar-activity studies. For a long time Ca II K observations were barely explored, but recent digitizations of multiple archives have allowed their extensive analysis. However, various studies have reported diverse results partly due to the insufficient quality of the digitized data. Furthermore, inhomogeneities have been identified within the individual archives, which, at least partly, could be due to the digitization. As a result, some of the archives, e.g. that from the Kodaikanal observatory, were re-digitized. The results obtained by different authors who analyzed the data from the new digitization of the Kodaikanal archive differ from each other and from those derived from the old digitization. Since the data were processed and analyzed using different techniques, it is not clear, however, whether the differences are due to the digitization or the processing of the data. To understand the reasons for such discrepancies, we analyze here the data from the two most recent digitizations of this archive. We use the same techniques to consistently process the images from both archives and to derive the plage areas from them. Some issues have been identified in both digitizations, implying that they are intrinsic characteristics of the data. Moreover, errors in timing of the observations plague both digitizations. Overall, the most recent 16-bit digitization offers an improvement over the earlier 8-bit one. It also includes considerably more data and should be preferred.