First publication on sunspots 400 years ago
One of the many historical sources for the activity of the Sun is just being harvested by the University of Oulu and the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP).
The Royal Astronomical Society treasures the extensive collection of astronomical observations by Samuel Heinrich Schwabe made in the 19th century. Tens of thousands of new sunspot positions are currently being measured and analysed from the historical drawings of the Sun by scientists in Germany and Finland.
“The solar observations by Schwabe are very precise and are accompanied by numerous verbal descriptions of the surface appearance of the sun,” explains Dr. Rainer Arlt from the AIP who is leading the project. “The space physicists of the University Oulu are working to study early solar activity by several methods, and this historical material is a real treasure”, comments Prof. Kalevi Mursula from Oulu.
Mechanisms for generating magnetic fields in stars and the Sun are fairly well known, but it is still not possible to mimic the solar activity in a simulation solely based on basic physical principles. It is even more demanding to predict the activity in the future. Once we have a full record of sunspot positions and sizes over the entire period of telescopic observations of the Sun, we will have much better constraints a successful theory should reproduce.
The history of research on the activity of the Sun goes back 400 years when Johannes Fabricius published the first article on sunspots on 23 June 1611. Numerous observers have recorded sunspots ever since.
