Speaker
Description
The 21$^\textrm{st}$ century has brought us many new and exciting groundbreaking facilities such as Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST), Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), and Solar Orbiter (SO) with more on the horizon such as Next Generation Ground based Solar Observing Network (ngGONG) and PHOtospheric Magnetograph Imager (PHOMI) for upcoming NOAA SpaceWeather Geostationary (SWGEO) program satellites. While these new facilities bring excitement and new opportunities to unravel the mystery of our sun, they risk accelerating issues with facilities that they replace and the data they produce. The biggest risk lies with 20$^\textrm{th}$ century data but is present in more recent observations as well. These risks include not only being underutilized but also lost to time, appearing too old for most researchers to use but too modern for historians to care about. However, they o er unique perspectives that haven’t been observed with the latest instrumentation such as the modern maximum period (solar cycles 15-23), the flares of August 1972, and the Great Sunspot Group of 1947. This talk will focus on current efforts to preserve crucial historical data products, their uses, and ask the question of when, “do observations become historical?”. Before finishing with a discussion on the fact that all these new 21$^\textrm{st}$ century facilities will eventually become historical as the field advances.