Abstract
The secular evolution of solar activity and the Sun–Earth relationships have been important research topics of the scientific community throughout the last century. This whole type of investigation needed a variable that was able to provide information on the state of the Sun. For historical reasons, the variables used have depended fundamentally on the sunspots (number of groups of sunspots, Wolf number, sunspot area, etc.). Recently, because the Sun is now monitored practically using almost the whole electromagnetic spectrum and particle flux, the number of indices that give us information on the state of the Sun has increased considerably, although the time series are very short.
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Vaquero, J., Vázquez, M. (2009). Reconstruction of Solar Activity During the Telescopic Era. In: The Sun Recorded Through History. Astrophysics and Space Science Library, vol 361. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-92790-9_7
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