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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 August 2015
In the early years of centimetric radio astronomy, even before high resolution techniques were available, it was found that the apparent brightness temperature of the full disk is made up of a background level (the so-called quiet sun temperature) added to which is a contribution roughly proportional to the sum of the sunspot areas on the disk (Smerd 1964, Pawsey and Smerd 1953). Eclipse observations in 1946 at a wavelength of 10.7 cm (Covington 1947) and in 1948 at 10 cm (Piddington and Hindman 1949) and at 3.2 cm (Hagen et al. 1948) showed that the average bright area occupied about 4-thousandths of the disk, and had brightness temperatures of about 5 million degrees. Subsequent interferometric observations have extended and amplified these early studies in several ways. Kundu (1965) has reviewed the literature up to the early 1960's.