Solar observation is the scientific endeavor of studying the Sun and its behavior and relation to the Earth and the remainder of the Solar System. Deliberate solar observation began thousands of years ago. That initial era of direct observation gave way to telescopes in the 1600s followed by satellites in the twentieth century.
Prehistory Stratigraphic data suggest that solar cycles have occurred for hundreds of millions of years, if not longer; measuring varves in precambrian sedimentary rock has revealed repeating peaks in layer thickness corresponding to the cycle. It is possible that the early atmosphere on Earth was more sensitive to solar irradiation than today, so that greater glacial melting (and thicker sediment deposits) could have occurred during years with greater sunspot activity. This would presume annual layering; however, alternative explanations (diurnal) have also been proposed.
Analysis of tree rings revealed a detailed picture of past solar cycles: Dendrochronologically dated radiocarbon concentrations have allowed for a reconstruction of sunspot activity covering 11,400 years.
Early observations Solar activity and related events have been regularly recorded since the time of the Babylonians. In the 8th century BC, they described solar eclipses and possibly predicted them from numerological rules. The earliest extant report of sunspots dates back to the Chinese Book of Changes, . The phrases used in the book translate to "A dou is seen in the Sun" and "A mei is seen in the Sun", where dou and mei would be darkening or obscuration (based on the context). Observations were regularly noted by Chinese and Korean astronomers at the behest of the emperors, rather than independently.
The first clear mention of a sunspot in Western literature, around 300 BC, was by the ancient Greek scholar Theophrastus, student of Plato and Aristotle and successor to the latter."Letter to the Editor: Sunspot observations by Theophrastus revisited" The Royal Frankish Annals record that beginning on 17 March AD 807 a large sunspot that was visible for eight days and incorrectly conclude that it was a transit of Mercury.
The earliest surviving record of deliberate sunspot observation dates from 364 BC, based on comments by Chinese astronomer Gan De in a star catalogue. By 28 BC, Chinese astronomers were regularly recording sunspot observations in official imperial records.
A large sunspot was observed at the time of Charlemagne's death in AD 813. Sunspot activity in 1129 was described by John of Worcester and Averroes provided a description of sunspots later in the 12th century; however, these observations were also misinterpreted as planetary transits.
The first unambiguous mention of the solar corona was by Leo Diaconus, a Byzantine historian. He wrote of the 22 December 968 total eclipse, which he experienced in Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul, Turkey):
The earliest known record of a sunspot drawing was in 1128, by John of Worcester.
Another early observation was of solar prominences, described in 1185 in the Russian Chronicle of Novgorod.
17th and 18th centuries
Giordano Bruno and Johannes Kepler suggested the idea that the sun rotated on its axis.The Galileo Project. David (1564-1617) and Johannes (1587-1616) Fabricius Sunspots were first observed telescopically on 18 December 1610 (Gregorian calendar, not yet adopted in England) by English astronomer Thomas Harriot, as recorded in his notebooks. On 9 March 1611 (Gregorian calendar, also not yet adopted in East Frisia) they were observed by Frisian medical student Johann Goldsmid (latinised name Johannes Fabricius) who subsequently teamed up with his father David Fabricius, a pastor and astronomer, to make further observations and to publish a description in a pamphlet in June 1611. The Fabricius' used camera obscura telescopy to get a better view of the solar disk, and like Harriot made observations shortly after sunrise and shortly before sunset. Johann was the first to realize that sunspots revealed solar rotation, but he died on 19 March 1616, aged 26 and his father a year later. Several scientists such as Johannes Kepler, Simon Marius, and Michael Maestlin were aware of the Fabricius' early sunspot work, and indeed Kepler repeatedly referred to it his writings. However, like that of Harriot, their work was otherwise not well known. Galileo Galilei almost certainly began telescopic sunspot observations around the same time as Harriot, given he made his first telescope in 1609 on hearing of the Dutch patent of the device, and that he had managed previously to make naked-eye observations of sunspots. He is also reported to have shown sunspots to astronomers in Rome, but we do not have records of the dates. The records of telescopic observations of sunspots that we do have from Galileo do not start until 1612, for when they are of unprecedented quality and detail as by then he had developed the telescope design and greatly increased its magnification. Likewise Christoph Scheiner had probably been observing the spots using an improved helioscope of his own design. Galileo and Scheiner, neither of whom knew of the work of Harriot or Fabricius vied for the credit for the discovery. In 1613, in Letters on Sunspots, Galileo refuted Scheiner's 1612 claim that sunspots were planets inside Mercury's orbit, showing that sunspots were surface features.
Although the physical aspects of sunspots were not identified until the 20th century, observations continued. Study was hampered during the 17th century due to the low number of sunspots during what is now recognized as an extended period of low solar activity, known as the Maunder Minimum. By the 19th century, then-sufficient sunspot records allowed researchers to infer periodic cycles in sunspot activity. In 1845, Henry and Alexander observed the Sun with a thermopile and determined that sunspots emitted less radiation than surrounding areas. The emission of higher than average amounts of radiation later were observed from the solar faculae. Sunspots had some importance in the debate over the nature of the Solar System. They showed that the Sun rotated, and their comings and goings showed that the Sun changed, contrary to Aristotle, who had taught that all celestial bodies were perfect, unchanging spheres.
Sunspots were rarely recorded between 1650 and 1699. Later analysis revealed the problem to be a reduced number of sunspots, rather than observational lapses. Building upon Gustav Spörer's work, the wife-and-husband team of Annie Maunder and Edward Maunder suggested that the Sun had changed from a period in which sunspots all but disappeared to a renewal of sunspot cycles starting in about 1700. Adding to this understanding of the absence of solar cycles were observations of aurorae, which were absent at the same time, except at the very highest magnetic latitudes
The lack of a solar corona during solar eclipses was also noted prior to 1715.
The period of low sunspot activity from 1645 to 1717 later became known as the "Maunder Minimum". Observers such as Johannes Hevelius, Jean Picard and Jean Dominique Cassini confirmed this change.
19th century
Solar spectroscopy
After the detection of infra-red radiation by William Herschel in 1800 and of Ultraviolet radiation by Johann Wilhelm Ritter, solar spectrometry began in 1817 when William Hyde Wollaston noticed that dark lines appeared in the solar spectrum when viewed through a glass prism. Joseph von Fraunhofer later independently discovered the lines and they were named Fraunhofer lines after him. Other physicists discerned that properties of the solar atmosphere could be determined from them. Notable scientists to advance spectroscopy were David Brewster, Gustav Kirchhoff, Robert Wilhelm Bunsen and Anders Jonas Ångström.
Solar cycle
The cyclic variation of the number of sunspots was first observed by Samuel Heinrich Schwabe between 1826 and 1843.Schwabe (1843) (Observations of the sun in the year 1843), Astronomische Nachrichten, 21 : 233-236. From page 235: "Vergleicht man nun die Zahl der Gruppen und der flecken-freien Tage mit einander, so findet man, dass die Sonnenflecken eine Periode von ungefähr 10 Jahren hatten ... " (If one compares the number of groups [of sunspots observed on the sun] and the sunspot-free days with one another, then one finds that the sunspots had a period of about 10 years ... ) Rudolf Wolf studied the historical record in an attempt to establish a history of solar variations. His data extended only to 1755. He also established in 1848 a relative sunspot number formulation to compare the work of different astronomers using varying equipment and methodologies, now known as the Wolf (or Zürich) sunspot number.
Gustav Spörer later suggested a 70-year period before 1716 in which sunspots were rarely observed as the reason for Wolf's inability to extend the cycles into the 17th century.
Also in 1848, Joseph Henry projected an image of the Sun onto a screen and determined that sunspots were cooler than the surrounding surface.
Around 1852, Edward Sabine, Wolf, Jean-Alfred Gautier and Johann von Lamont independently found a link between the solar cycle and geomagnetic activity, sparking the first research into interactions between the Sun and the Earth.
In the second half of the nineteenth century Richard Carrington and Spörer independently noted the migration of sunspot activity towards the solar equator as the cycle progresses. This pattern is best visualized in the form of the so-called butterfly diagram, first constructed by Edward Walter Maunder and Annie Scott Dill Maunder in the early twentieth century (see graph). Images of the Sun are divided into latitudinal strips, and the monthly-averaged fractional surface of sunspots calculated. This is plotted vertically as a color-coded bar, and the process is repeated month after month to produce a time-series diagram.
Half a century later, the father-and-son team of Harold and Horace Babcock showed that the solar surface is magnetized even outside of sunspots; that this weaker magnetic field is to first order a dipole; and that this dipole undergoes polarity reversals with the same period as the sunspot cycle (see graph below). These observations established that the solar cycle is a spatiotemporal magnetic process unfolding over the Sun as a whole.
Photography The Sun was photographed for the first time, on 2 April 1845, by French physicists Louis Fizeau and Léon Foucault. Sunspots, as well as the limb darkening effect, are visible in their daguerrotypes. Photography assisted in the study of solar prominences, granulation and spectroscopy. Charles A. Young first captured a prominence in 1870. Solar eclipses were also photographed, with the most useful early images taken in 1851 by Berkowski and in 1860 by De la Rue's team in Spain.
Rotation Early estimates of the Sun's rotation period varied between 25 and 28 days. The cause was determined independently in 1858 by Richard C. Carrington and Spörer. They discovered that the latitude with the most sunspots decreases from 40° to 5° during each cycle, and that at higher latitudes sunspots rotate more slowly. The Sun's rotation was thus shown to vary by latitude and that its outer layer must be fluid. In 1871 Hermann Vogel, and shortly thereafter by Charles Young confirmed this spectroscopically. Nils Dúner's spectroscopic observation in the 1880s showed a 30% difference between the Sun's faster equatorial regions and its slower polar regions.
Space weather