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Context. Studies of long-term solar activity and variability require knowledge of the past evolution of the solar surface magnetism. The archives of full-disc Ca II K observations that have been performed more or less regularly at various sites since 1892 can serve as an important source of such information. Aims. We derive the plage area evolution over the last 12 solar cycles by employing data from all Ca II K archives that are publicly available in digital form, including several as-yet-unexplored Ca II K archives. Methods. We analysed more than 290 000 full-disc Ca II K observations from 43 datasets spanning the period between 1892–2019. All images were consistently processed with an automatic procedure that performs the photometric calibration (if needed) and the limb-darkening compensation. The processing also accounts for artefacts affecting many of the images, including some very specific artefacts, such as bright arcs found in Kyoto and Yerkes data. Our employed methods have previously been tested and evaluated on synthetic data and found to be more accurate than other methods used in the literature to treat a subset of the data analysed here. Results. We produced a plage area time-series from each analysed dataset. We found that the differences between the plage areas derived from individual archives are mainly due to the differences in the central wavelength and the bandpass used to acquire the data at the various sites. We empirically cross-calibrated and combined the results obtained from each dataset to produce a composite series of plage areas. The ’backbone’ approach was used to bridge the series together. We have also shown that the selection of the backbone series has little effect on the final composite of the plage area. We quantified the uncertainty of determining the plage areas with our processing due to shifts in the central wavelength and found it to be less than 0.01 in fraction of the solar disc for the average conditions found on historical data. We also found the variable seeing conditions during the observations to slightly increase the plage areas during the activity maxima. Conclusions. We provide the most complete so far time series of plage areas based on corrected and calibrated historical and modern Ca II K images. Consistent plage areas are now available on 88% of all days from 1892 onwards and on 98% from 1907 onwards.

Abstract.We compare the substructures of the 1997February 07 coronal mass ejection (CME) observed near the Sun with a corresponding event in the interplanetary medium to determine the origin of magnetic clouds (MCs).We find that the eruptive prominence core of the CME observed near the Sun may not directly become a magnetic cloud as suggested by some authors and that it might instead become the "pressure pulse" following the magnetic cloud. We substantiate our conclusions using time of arrival, size and composition estimates of the CME-MC substructures obtained from ground based, SOHO and WIND observations.

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We report the results of our investigation of a giant eruptive prominence (initial mass ∼ g) using 16 6 # 10 microwave, X-ray, and white-light observations. The prominence erupted from the northwest limb of the Sun on 1994 April 5. The speed of the prominence was only ∼70 km s when it reached a height of ∼0.5 above Ϫ1 R , the solar surface. In X-rays, a large region with reduced X-ray emission was observed enveloping the initial location of the prominence and extending to much larger heights. At the bottom of this depletion and beneath the eruptive prominence, an X-ray arcade formed, progressively spreading from south to north along the limb. This is the first time a direct detailed comparison is made between coronal dimming and a prominence eruption. We were able to confirm that the coronal dimming is indeed a near-surface manifestation of the coronal mass ejection (CME). The orientation of the structures involved did not allow the observations of the coronal cavity, but all the other substructures of the CME could be identified. The mass expelled from the Sun in the form of the eruptive prominence and the coronal dimming are comparable. The estimated total mass is somewhat larger than that reported in other X-ray-dimming events.

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Active region NOAA 7360 was observed in 1992 December with various instruments including the Yohkoh satellite. In this region, a small loop emerged near one of the footpoints of a pre-existing large coronal loop. These loops show evidence that interactions between coronal loops cause flares, microflares, and plasma flow. All of the four flares observed in this region show that brightenings in the small loop occurred first, and then the large loop flared up. The brightenings in the large loop can not occur by themselves, but must be triggered by the brightenings in the small loop. There must be interactions between the loops to cause these flares. As well as the flares, many microflares occurred in the small loop. More than half of them are accompanied by plasma ejection phenomena from the small loop into the large loop. The large loop is filled with ejected plasma with velocities of about 1000 km s -1. These ejection phenomena are considered as X-ray jets. The associated occurrences of the microflares and the jets suggest that they are also caused by interactions between the loops. The recurrent occurrences of the homologous flares and microflares mean that the magnetic field structure in this region inevitably causes the activity due to loop-loop interactions; the flares and jets occur under a common magnetic field structure.