Abstract
The focus of this article is a re-count of Richard Carrington’s original sunspot observations from his book drawings (Carrington in Observations of the Spots on the Sun from November 9, 1853, to March 24, 1861 Made at Redhill, Williams and Norgate, London, 1863) by an observer from the World Data Center-SILSO (WDC-SILSO, http://www.sidc.be/silso/home) network, Thomas H. Teague (UK). This modern re-count will enable the recomputation of the entire Sunspot Number series in a way Carrington’s original counts (Casas and Vaquero in Solar Phys. 289(1), 79, 2014) did not. Here we present comparison studies of the new re-counted series with contemporary observations, new data extracted from the Journals of the Zürich Observatory and other sources of Carrington’s own observations and conclude that Carrington’s group counting is very close to the modern way of counting while his method for counting individual spots lags significantly behind modern counts. We also test the quality and robustness of the new recount with methods developed in Mathieu et al. (Astrophys. J. 886(1), 7, 2019).
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Arlt, R.: 2011,. Astron. Nachr. 332(8), 805.
Arlt, R., Vaquero, J.M.: 2020, Historical sunspot records. Living Rev. Solar Phys. 17(1), 1. DOI. ADS.
Arlt, R., Leussu, R., Giese, N., Mursula, K., Usoskin, I.G.: 2013,. Mon. Not. Roy. Astron. Soc. 433(4), 3165.
Bennett, J.A.: 1978, Catalogue of the archives and manuscripts of the Royal Astronomical Society. Mem. R. Astron. Soc. 85, 1. ADS.
Carrasco, V.M.S., Gallego, M.C., Arlt, R., Vaquero, J.M.: 2020, Revisiting the amplitude of solar cycle 9: the case of sunspot observations by W.C. Bond. Solar Phys. 295(9), 127. DOI. ADS.
Carrington, R.C.: 1863, Observations of the Spots on the Sun from November 9, 1853, to March 24, 1861 Made at Redhill, Williams and Norgate London.
Casas, R., Vaquero, J.M.: 2014,. Solar Phys. 289(1), 79.
Chatzistergos, T., Usoskin, I.G., Kovaltsov, G.A., Krivova, N.A., Solanki, S.K.: 2017, New reconstruction of the sunspot group numbers since 1739 using direct calibration and “backbone” methods. Astron. Astrophys. 602, A69. DOI. ADS.
Clette, F., Berghmans, D., Vanlommel, P., Van der Linden, R.A.M., Koeckelenbergh, A., Wauters, L.: 2007,. Adv. Space Res. 40(7), 919.
Clette, F., Cliver, E.W., Lefèvre, L., Svalgaard, L., Vaquero, J.M., Leibacher, J.W.: 2016, Preface to topical issue: recalibration of the sunspot number. Solar Phys. 291(9-10), 2479. DOI. ADS.
Clette, F., Cliver, E., Lefèvre, L., Svalgaard, L., Vaquero, J., Leibacher, J.: 2016, Preface to topical issue: recalibration of the sunspot number. Solar Phys. 291, 2479. DOI.
Cliver, E.W.: 2006, The 1859 space weather event: then and now. Adv. Space Res. 38(2), 119. DOI. ADS.
Cliver, E.W., Keer, N.C.: 2012, Richard Christopher Carrington: briefly among the great scientists of his time. Solar Phys. 280(1), 1. DOI. ADS.
Diercke, A., Arlt, R., Denker, C.: 2015,. Astron. Nachr. 336(1), 53.
Duffett-Smith, P.: 1988, Practical Astronomy with Your Calculator, 3rd edn. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ISBN 0521356296.
Friedli, T.K.: 2016,. Solar Phys. 291(9-10), 2505.
Hayakawa, H., Ebihara, Y., Hand, D.P., Hayakawa, S., Kumar, S., Mukherjee, S., Veenadhari, B.: 2018, Low-latitude aurorae during the extreme space weather events in 1859. Astrophys. J. 869(1), 57. DOI. ADS.
Hayakawa, H., Ebihara, Y., Willis, D.M., Toriumi, S., Iju, T., Hattori, K., Wild, M.N., Oliveira, D.M., Ermolli, I., Ribeiro, J.R., Correia, A.P., Ribeiro, A.I., Knipp, D.J.: 2019, Temporal and spatial evolutions of a large sunspot group and great auroral storms around the Carrington event in 1859. Space Weather 17(11), 1553. DOI. ADS.
Hayakawa, H., Besser, B.P., Iju, T., Arlt, R., Uneme, S., Imada, S., Bourdin, P.-A., Kraml, A.: 2020, Thaddäus Derfflinger’s sunspot observations during 1802-1824: a primary reference to understand the Dalton minimum. Astrophys. J. 890(2), 98. DOI. ADS.
Hintze, J.L., Nelson, R.D.: 1998,. Am. Stat. 52(2), 181.
Hoyt, D.V., Schatten, K.H.: 1998, Group sunspot numbers: a new solar activity reconstruction. Solar Phys. 181(2), 491. DOI. ADS.
Izenman, A.J.: 1985, J.R. Wolf and the Zurich sunspot relative numbers. Math. Intell. 7, 79.
Lepshokov, D.K., Tlatov, A.G., Vasil’eva, V.V.: 2012,. Geomagn. Aeron. 52(7), 843.
Mathieu, S., von Sachs, R., Ritter, C., Delouille, V., Lefèvre, L.: 2019,. Astrophys. J. 886(1), 7.
Newton, H.W.: 1958, The Face of the Sun. ADS.
Orchiston, W., Clark, S.: 2007, The sun kings: the unexpected tragedy of Richard Carrington and the tale of how modern astronomy began. J. Astron. Hist. Herit. 10(3), 246. ADS. (Clark)
Scott, D.: 2010, Scott’s rule. Wiley Interdiscip. Rev.: Comput. Stat. 2, 497. DOI.
Sheehan, W.: 2007, In: Hockey, T., Trimble, V., Williams, T.R., Bracher, K., Jarrell, R.A., Marché, J.D., Ragep, F.J., Palmeri, J., Bolt, M. (eds.) Carrington, Richard Christopher, Springer, New York, 202. DOI. ISBN 978-0-387-30400-7.
Svalgaard, L., Schatten, K.H.: 2016, Reconstruction of the sunspot group number: the backbone method. Solar Phys. 291(9-10), 2653. DOI. ADS.
Teague, E.T.H.: 1996, Carrington’s method of determining sunspot positions. J. Br. Astron. Assoc. 106, 82. ADS.
Teague, T.H.: 2020. Available at https://wwwbis.sidc.be/silso/DATA/Carrington/Teague_Table.csv.
Toriumi, S., Wang, H.: 2019, Flare-productive active regions. Living Rev. Solar Phys. 16(1), 3. DOI. ADS.
Usoskin, I., Kovaltsov, G., Kiviaho, W.: 2021, Robustness of solar-cycle empirical rules across different series including an updated active-day fraction (ADF) sunspot group series. Solar Phys. 296(1), 13. DOI. ADS.
Usoskin, I.G., Kovaltsov, G.A., Lockwood, M., Mursula, K., Owens, M., Solanki, S.K.: 2016, A new calibrated sunspot group series since 1749: statistics of active day fractions. Solar Phys. 291(9-10), 2685. DOI. ADS.
Vaquero, J.M., Svalgaard, L., Carrasco, V.M.S., Clette, F., Lefèvre, L., Gallego, M.C., Arlt, R., Aparicio, A.J.P., Richard, J.-G., Howe, R.: 2016, A revised collection of sunspot group numbers. Solar Phys. 291(9-10), 3061. DOI. ADS.
Waldmeier, M.: 1962, Review of publications- the sun-spot-activity in the years 1610-1960. J. Roy. Astron. Soc. Can. 56, 233. ADS.
Wolf, R.: 1848, Nachrichten von der Sternwarte in Bern. DOI. ADS.
Wolf, R.: 1850, Mittheilungen über die Sonnenflecken I. Astron. Mitt. Eidgenöss. Sternwarte Zür. 1, 3. ADS.
Wolf, R.: 1861, Mittheilungen über die Sonnenflecken XIII. Astron. Mitt. Eidgenöss. Sternwarte Zür. 2, 83. ADS.
Wolf, R.: 1864, Mittheilungen über die Sonnenflecken XVI. Astron. Mitt. Eidgenöss. Sternwarte Zür. 2, 163. ADS.
Wolf, R.: 1865, Mittheilungen über die Sonnenflecken XVII. Astron. Mitt. Eidgenöss. Sternwarte Zür. 2, 193. ADS.
Wolf, R.: 1874, Astronomische Mittheilungen XXXV. Astron. Mitt. Eidgenöss. Sternwarte Zür. 4, 173. ADS.
Wolf, R.: 1878, Astronomische Mittheilungen XLVI. Astron. Mitt. Eidgenöss. Sternwarte Zür. 5, 165. ADS.
Wolf, R.: 1878, Beobachtungen der Sonnenflecken. ETH Bibliothek, Hochschularchiv, Hs 368:46, 1 Bd., unpublished manuscript, Zurich.
Wolf, R., Wolfer, A.: 1894, Astronomische Mittheilungen LXXXIV. Astron. Mitt. Eidgenöss. Sternwarte Zür. 9, 109. ADS.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by a PhD grant awarded by the Royal Observatory of Belgium to S. Bhattacharya. L. Lefèvre and F. Clette wish to acknowledge the support of ISSI https://www.issibern.ch/teams/sunspotnoser/. The authors would also like to thank the referee for his/her constructive comments that helped to improve this manuscript considerably.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest
The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Bhattacharya, S., Teague, E.T.H., Fay, S. et al. A Modern Reconstruction of Richard Carrington’s Observations (1853–1861). Sol Phys 296, 118 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11207-021-01864-8
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11207-021-01864-8