Ancient Web: Jan Alvestad's Solar Report Preserved the Sun One Day at a Time

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

The Sun has no interest in human filing systems. Jan Alvestad has spent years filing its behavior anyway.

Read the Solar Terrestrial Activity Report.

This is not a glossy space-science feature page. It is a dense daily report containing geomagnetic conditions, solar-wind speeds, flare observations, coronal holes, active-region classifications, forecasts, and measurements such as the 10.7-centimeter solar radio flux. Alvestad signs the reports and distinguishes his observations from measurements supplied by sources including NOAA and scientific observatories.

The interface's first table links recent charts, older data, and an archive of reports that starts in January 2003. The daily archive is arranged in long year-by-year tables where each date is a link. The introduction warns that a red link may mean the daily report was missing and a solar-region map survives instead.

An archive of forecasts that can no longer forecast

A January 28, 2003 report contains the same fundamental kinds of observations seen on the present homepage: active sunspot groups, magnetic classifications, flux measurements, and expected geomagnetic behavior. Its monthly table lists solar-cycle-23 values and numbers that were then still provisional.

Reading it now is not the same as getting the weather. The forecast window expired decades ago, but the records show how contemporary observations were interpreted at the time. They provide context for comparing solar cycles and understanding the vocabulary used during changing periods of activity.

The present page, updated in October 2026, still reports activity for solar cycle 25 and links its progress charts beside historic plots reaching back to earlier cycles. It includes a separate coronal-hole history where dated entries track how recurrent dark regions on the Sun rotate into view.

This is exactly the kind of technical, independently maintained website that becomes more historically valuable with every year of accumulated data. Nobody has to rebuild a narrative about what an observer thought the Sun was doing in January 2003: the observer's own report remains available.

The numbers in a daily report are time-specific, and the author's interpretations should not be confused with an official space-weather warning. The preservation accomplishment is the continuity of the log.

Explore the STAR daily archive and compare old reports with the current format.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.