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Updated: June 8, 2025
Schwabe, however, worked on, gathering each year fresh evidence of a law such as he had indicated; and when Humboldt published in 1851, in the third volume of his Kosmos, a table of the sun-spot statistics collected by him from 1826 downwards, the strength of his case was perceived with, so to speak, a start of surprise; the reality and importance of the discovery were simultaneously recognised, and the persevering Hofrath of Dessau found himself famous among astronomers.
Indeed, the phrase "sun-spot period" must be understood as fitting very loosely the great fact it is taken to represent; so loosely, that the interval between two maxima may rise to sixteen and a half or sink below seven and a half years.
On December 22, 1859, a letter had been addressed by a M. Lescarbault of Orgères to Leverrier, through M. Vallée, hon. inspector-general of roads and bridges, announcing that on March 26, 1859, about four in the afternoon, Lescarbault had seen a round black spot on the face of the sun, and had watched it as it passed across like a planet in transit not with the slow motion of an ordinary sun-spot.
The cloudy surface of Mercury now lay far beneath us, and the glowing disc of the sun, which appeared four or five times larger than it does on the earth, had taken a bluish tinge a proof that we had reached a very great altitude. "What a magnificent 'sun-spot!" exclaimed the professor in a tone of admiration. "Just take a peep at it."
Do you remember with what laughter the sun-spot theory was received?
De la Rue thus obtained, in 1861, a stereoscopic view of a sun-spot and surrounding faculæ, representing the various parts in their true mutual relations.
Here lies one of the best clues for the physicist who seeks the cause of magnetism, and attempts to produce it, as Barnett has recently succeeded in doing, by rapidly whirling masses of metal in the laboratory. Sun-spot vortex in the upper hydrogen atmosphere. Photographed with the spectroheliograph. Perhaps a word of caution should be interpolated at this point.
Nowadays, when all persons connected with the daily papers are on the lookout for some startling fact that shall sell their newspapers, such an occurrence as the enormous increase in the size of a sun-spot is too good to be let slip by them.
If the ancient Chaldaeans gave to the planetary conjunctions an influence over terrestrial events, let us remember that in our own time people have searched for connection between terrestrial conditions and periods of unusual prevalence of sun spots; while De la Rue, Loewy, and Balfour Stewart thought they found a connection between sun-spot displays and the planetary positions.
Carrington pointed out in 1863, that while, during eight successive periods, from 1770 downwards, there were approximate coincidences between Jupiter's aphelion passages and sun-spot maxima, the relation had been almost exactly reversed in the two periods preceding that date; and Wolf himself finally concluded that the Jovian origin must be abandoned.
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