The records of solar observations made two centuries ago

Log, kept in one of the houses in the American state of Maine for over 200 years, revealed the secrets of the solar past. Discovered page early observations can shed light on the solar cycle.

In 1816, the Northern hemisphere experienced the so-called "year without summer". Jonathan Fisher, a congregational Minister, who devoted part of his life work at Harvard University, suggested that to blame the sun. In June 1816 he began making detailed drawings of sunspots in your journal.

Michael Makou, a historian from the University of North Carolina at chapel hill, and his colleague William Denig of the National oceanic and atmospheric administration (NOAA) published an article in the publication Space Weather, which told about the discovery of drawings of sunspots in the magazines of Fischer.

The year without a summer

In April 1815 in Indonesia, the eruption of Tambora volcano, with emissions of ash, sulfur dioxide and aerosol formation, which prevented the penetration of sunlight. The result is a sharp jump in temperature led to severe agricultural losses in Europe and North America, causing massive famines.

According to Denga and Makou, scientists around the world have suggested that the sun plays a key role in extreme temperature changes, not knowing about the connection between the eruption and weather. The low number of sunspots present on the sun at that time seemed to confirm this hypothesis, since the sun had been minimal activity in accordance with its 11-year cycle.

"Fisher was an educated man and it is likely that he knew about the relationship low temperature with sunspots," write the authors.

Two weeks after that, in June 1816 thick snow blanket covered his house in the town of blue hill in Maine, Fisher began to draw sunspots in his journal. He continued to sketch until the summer of 1817, when the weather returned to normal.

"Incentive to the observations was the weather, not sunspots. At that time science was not yet a profession, and few were engaged in similar work. Only a few enthusiasts in North and South America watched sunspots informed 1816, and Fisher is the only one who kept records of sunspots in this region during this fateful year," explained Macwow.

Hacking archive

Magazines Fisher for centuries, was displayed in its historical home. But in his youth he developed a secret code to protect your files.

"Only in 1940 someone very capable and patient was able to decipher his shorthand," said Makou, who moonlights as a tour guide in this house and in preparation for a series of discussions about the year without a summer considered geillustreerde a digital copy of the translation of his journals.

"I decided to look at the originals who are still in the Fisher's house, and found that he was doing regular drawings of the sun in his journal to illustrate his theory about sun spots and their connection with extreme weather."

These blueprints are now available online on the website of NOAA, reveal a new way of keeping track of how sunspots evolved over time.

"Knowledge of the solar cycle depends on how much information we can obtain for long periods of time. Observations of Fischer and contribute to a new and completely unprecedented ways of solving this problem", — concluded the author.

Translated by «Yandex.Translator»