Strong evidence of low levels of solar activity during the Maunder Minimum

Abstract

The Maunder Minimum (MM) was a period of prolonged solar activity minimum between 1645 and 1715. Several works have identified a significant number of problematic spotless days in the MM included in existing databases. We have found a list of exact spotless (in the second half of 1709) and spot days (January and August 1709) provided by Johann Heinrich Muller. We computed the most probable value and upper/lower limits of the active day fraction (ADF) from Muller's data using the hypergeometrical probability distribution. Our sample is not strictly random because Muller recorded observations in consecutive days when he observed sunspots. Therefore, our result represents an upper threshold of solar activity for 1709. We compared this result with annual values of the ADF calculated for the Dalton Minimum and the most recent solar cycles. We concluded that it was less active than most years both in the Dalton Minimum and in the most recent solar cycles. Therefore, the solar activity level estimated in this work for 1709 represents robust evidence of low solar activity levels in the MM.

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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Long-term modulation of solar cycles
• Revisiting Christoph Scheiner's Sunspot Records: a New Perspective on Solar Activity of the Early Telescopic Era
• Sunspot positions from observations by Flaugergues in the Dalton Minimum
• Hemispheric Distribution of Solar Active Regions During Solar Cycles 23-25