Sir William Herschel propounded an explanation of Wilson’s observation which received much notice, but which, out of respect for his memory, is not now described, as it violated the elementary laws of heat.
Sir John Herschel noticed that the spots are mostly confined to two zones extending to about 35° on each side of the equator, and that a zone of equatoreal calms is free from spots. But it was R. C. Carrington[[4]] who, by his continuous observations at Redhill, in Surrey, established the remarkable fact that, while the rotation period in the highest latitudes, 50°, where spots are seen, is twenty-seven-and-a-half days, near the equator the period is only twenty-five days. His splendid volume of observations of the sun led to much new information about the average distribution of spots at different epochs.
Schwabe, of Dessau, began in 1826 to study the solar surface, and, after many years of work, arrived at a law of frequency which has been more fruitful of results than any discovery in solar physics.[[5]] In 1843 he announced a decennial period of maxima and minima of sun-spot displays. In 1851 it was generally accepted, and, although a period of eleven years has been found to be more exact, all later observations, besides the earlier ones which have been hunted up for the purpose, go to establish a true periodicity in the number of sun-spots. But quite lately Schuster[[6]] has given reasons for admitting a number of co-existent periods, of which the eleven-year period was predominant in the nineteenth century.
In 1851 Lament, a Scotchman at Munich, found a decennial period in the daily range of magnetic declination. In 1852 Sir Edward Sabine announced a similar period in the number of “magnetic storms” affecting all of the three magnetic elements—declination, dip, and intensity. Australian and Canadian observations both showed the decennial period in all three elements. Wolf, of Zurich, and Gauthier, of Geneva, each independently arrived at the same conclusion.
It took many years before this coincidence was accepted as certainly more than an accident by the old-fashioned astronomers, who want rigid proof for every new theory. But the last doubts have long vanished, and a connection has been further traced between violent outbursts of solar activity and simultaneous magnetic storms.
The frequency of the Aurora Borealis was found by Wolf to follow the same period. In fact, it is closely allied in its cause to terrestrial magnetism. Wolf also collected old observations tracing the periodicity of sun-spots back to about 1700 A.D.
Spoerer deduced a law of dependence of the average latitude of sun-spots on the phase of the sun-spot period.
All modern total solar eclipse observations seem to show that the shape of the luminous corona surrounding the moon at the moment of totality has a special distinct character during the time of a sun-spot maximum, and another, totally different, during a sun-spot minimum.
A suspicion is entertained that the total quantity of heat received by the earth from the sun is subject to the same period. This would have far-reaching effects on storms, harvests, vintages, floods, and droughts; but it is not safe to draw conclusions of this kind except from a very long period of observations.
Solar photography has deprived astronomers of the type of Carrington of the delight in devoting a life’s work to collecting data. It has now become part of the routine work of an observatory.