Long-lived sunspots in historical records: a case study analysis from 1660 to 1676
arXiv:2502.16921 · doi:10.1007/s11207-025-02432-0
Abstract
Sunspot engravings and measurements in 1660-1676 are analyzed to retrieve sunspot area and heliocoordinates. Based on these data, we revise the Hoyt and Schatten (The role of the sun in climate change, 1997) hypothesis of long-lived sunspots during the Maunder minimum as a sign of weakened convection. Historical reports also clarify what each observer defined as a sunspot and the purpose of the observations. The reconstructed longitudes of sunspots allow us to evaluate the rotation rate, revealing that the historical rotation profile resembles that of long-lived sunspot groups in the modern era.
References in corpus (6)
- Increasing Lifetime of Recurrent Sunspot Groups within the Greenwich Photoheliographic Results
- Thaddäus Derfflinger's sunspot observations during 1802-1824: A primary reference to understand the Dalton Minimum
- Sunspot characteristics at the onset of the Maunder Minimum based on the observations of Hevelius
- Reanalyses of the Sunspot Observations of Fogelius and Siverus: Two "Long-Term" Observers during the Maunder Minimum
- Sunspot positions from observations by Flaugergues in the Dalton Minimum
- The Mira discovery problem -- Observations by David Fabricius in 1596 and 1609 (and by others before?): Positional accuracy, brightness, color index, and period