10. Solar Activity

Abstract

The reader is kindly asked to consider this report for some sort of greatly unbalanced equilibrium between the pressure exercised by the steadily increasing flow of papers discussing the vastly extending subject of solar activity, and the equally steady pressure exercised by the editor who insists on having this report twice as short as three years ago. Therefore, some selection of the subjects and papers had to be made, a fairly severe one, since only about one third of all published papers could have been mentioned in the references, and I am well aware that almost everyone who will read the report, could suggest some improvement of the selection scheme. Nevertheless, I believe that the report as it stands, can fulfill its basic purpose, i.e. to give to the readers a general picture on the progress, which has been achieved in the field of solar activity research since the Prague meeting and on some of the research activities which are in progress at the present time.It is a great pleasure to acknowledge the enormous help I have received from the authors of the individual sections of the Draft Report, as well as from many other members of the Commission, who have very kindly provided me, or the co-authors, with useful information on the recent progress of their work. It is necessary to add that some highly valuable comments made by V. Bumba, J. T. Jefferies, C. Sawyer, E. v. P. Smith, B. Valníček and J. M. Wilcox, have also been included in other chapters than those prepared by themselves.