Recent improvements of the basic solar radiation data for λλ 3300-12500 å

This paper reviews shortly the most reliable observations, which are available at present to describe the basic characteristics of the solar radiation: absolute measurements of the disk-center intensity, high resolution spectra of disk-center intensity and irradiance, and scans of the center to limb variation at continuum wavelengths and for the line-averaged radiation. Further it reports recent results obtained by the merging of these observations, namely high precision data for disk-center intensity and irradiance, which concern not only the line-averaged radiation, but also the position of the continuum.