These 17th-century drawings of the sun by Kepler add fire to solar cycle mystery
- by Space.com
- Jul 30, 2024
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The earliest datable sunspot drawings based on Johannes Kepler's solar observations with camera obscura in May 1607. Kepler accompanied the drawings with descriptions in Latin of the sunspots he was observing.
(Image credit: Public Domain)
"Half-forgotten" sunspot drawings by Renaissance astronomer Johannes Kepler are showing us more about how the sun's cycle of activities work.
Kepler (1571-1630), who was born in what we now call Germany, is best known in astronomy for formulating the laws of planetary motion. His diverse interests, however, included looking at the sun. Drawings he made of a sunspot group in 1607, a new study reveals, show the "tail-end of the solar cycle" with instrumentation before the telescope was more widely available in the early 17th century.
"The group's findings … offer a key to resolving the controversy on the duration of solar cycles at the beginning of the 17th century," Japan's Nagoya University wrote in a statement.
Known as the Maunder Minimum, this period (between 1645 and 1715) was said to be an era of fewer sunspots than usual, which in turn led to colder periods on Earth than the norm of the day.
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