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abstract
The National Solar Observatory has begun an NSF funded program to obtain precise differential surface photometry of the sun. This experiment is directed at understanding the source of the long (yearly) and short (daily) solar luminosity and irradiance fluctuations. The project will generate full-disk data over wavelengths from 393 nm to 800 nm with 1 arcsecond/pixel spatial resolution. The relative photometric precision of the instrument will be 0.1\% /pixel with time resolution of about 1 hour. Two stations will allow occasional 24 hour continuous datasets to be obtained. The current status of the program and scientific focus of the experiment are reviewed in this paper.
