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Properties of sun corona5/17/2023 Tlatov at the Central Astronomical Observatory in Pulkovo in 1989 used drawings and photos of all eclipses since 1870 to quantify how the shape of the corona changed from sunspot cycle 12 to 24. The research by Russian solar astronomer A. French astronomer Pierre Jules César Janssen was one of the first to recognize this correlation as he compared the eclipses of 18: At sunspot maximum, the corona is rounder at sunspot minimum, the corona is more elliptical.Īlthough Janssen considered coronal changes within a sunspot cycle, the studies of coronal shapes and their changes from one cycle to the next continued with Russian astronomer Alexi Ganskiy in 1897 and later in 1902 with Indian astronomer Kavasji Naegamvala. Astronomers soon wondered whether the shape and character of the solar corona also changed with such a cadence. As one popular book on astronomy from 1890 notes “It would be far better, however, if some other name such as "glowing clouds" or "red jets" could be used, for there is now no doubt that they are jets of gases, chiefly hydrogen, constantly playing over the face of the sun, though only seen when this brighter light is quenched.”įigure 2 – Major Tennant’s sketch of 1868 eclipse showing prominences.Īround this same time, Samuel Heinrich Schwabe discovered that the number of sunspots countable on the solar surface increased and decreased with a roughly 11-year cycle. The drawing of the Augeclipse viewed from India by Major Tennant shows not only the corona but also the new solar feature called the ‘prominence’. This led him to the idea that the corona must belong to the Sun, not the Moon, because of its great size.īy 1868, sketches became more elaborate and detailed as artists and scientists alike learned what to look for. Spanish astronomer José Joaquin de Ferrer, during the Jeclipse, even coined the term ‘corona’ to describe the ephemeral glow of light surrounding the eclipsed sun disk. Eclipse: Who? What? When? Where? and How?īy 1800, virtually all subsequent total solar eclipses were rendered either as detailed sketches, or after 1851 as actual photographs.
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