Richard Christopher Carrington
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Richard Christopher Carrington | |
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Born | Chelsea, London, England | 26 May 1826
Died | 27 November 1875 Churt, England | (aged 49)
Nationality | English |
Alma mater | Trinity College, Cambridge |
Known for | Solar observations |
Spouse | Rosa Ellen Jeffries (1845–1875, m. 1869) |
Awards | Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1859) Lalande Prize (1864) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Astronomy |
Institutions | Durham University Observatory[1] |
Richard Christopher Carrington (26 May 1826 – 27 November 1875)
Life
Carrington was born at
In June 1852 he fixed upon a site for an observatory and dwelling-house at
Meanwhile, Carrington had adopted, and was cultivating with his usual felicity of treatment, a 'second subject' at that juncture of peculiar interest and importance. While his new observatory was in course of construction, he devoted some of his spare time to examining the drawings and records of sunspots in possession of the RAS, and was much struck with the need and scarcity of systematic solar observations. Sabine's and Wolf's discovery of the coincidence between the magnetic and sunspot periods had just then been announced, and he believed he should be able to take advantage of the pre-occupation or inability of other observers to appropriate to himself, by 'close and methodical research,' the next ensuing eleven-year cycle. He accordingly resolved to devote his daylight energies to the Sun, while reserving his nights for the stars. Solar physics as a whole, however, he prudently excluded from his field of view. He limited his task to fixing the true period of the Sun's rotation (of which curiously discrepant values had been obtained), to tracing the laws of distribution of maculæ, and investigating the existence of permanent surface-currents. Adequately to compass these ends, new devices of observation, reduction, and comparison were required. Leaving photography to his successors as too undeveloped for immediate use, he chose a method founded on the idea of making the solar disc its own circular micrometer. An image of the Sun was thrown upon a screen placed at such a distance from the eyepiece of the 4½-inch equatorial as to give to the disc a diameter of 12 to 14 inches. In the focus of the telescope, which was firmly clamped, two bars of flattened gold wire were fastened at right angles to each other, and inclined about 45° on either side of the meridian. Then, as the inverted image traversed the screen, the instants of contact with the wires of the Sun's limbs and of the spot-nucleus to be measured were severally noted, when an easy calculation gave its heliocentric position (ib. xiv. 153).
In this manner, during seven and a half years, 5,290 observations were made of 954 separate groups, many of which were besides accurately depicted in drawings. By the sudden death of his father, however, in July 1858, and the consequent devolution upon Carrington of the management of the brewery, the complete execution of his project of research was frustrated. He continued for some time to supervise the solar work he had previously carried on in person; but in March 1861, seeing no prospect of release from commercial engagements, he thought it advisable to close the series. The results appeared in a quarto volume, the publication of which was aided by a grant from the Royal Society. Its title ran as follows: Observations of the Spots on the Sun from November 9, 1853, to March 24, 1861, made at Redhill (London, 1863). Never were data more opportunely furnished. Perhaps more effectually than the pronouncements of spectrum analysis, they served to revolutionise ideas on solar physics.
Efforts to ascertain the true rate of solar rotation had been continually baffled by what were called the 'proper motions' of the spots serving as indexes to it. Carrington showed that these were in reality due to a great 'bodily drift' of the photosphere, diminishing apparently from the equator to the poles (ib. xix. 81). There was, then, no single period ascertainable through observations of the solar surface. By equatorial spots the circuit was found to be performed in about two and a half days less than by spots at the (ordinarily) extreme north and south limits of 45°. The assumed 'mean period' of 25.38 solar days applied, in fact, only to two zones 14° from the equator; nearer to it the time of rotation was shorter, further from it longer, than the average. Carrington succeeded in representing the daily movement of a spot in any heliographical latitude l, by the empirical expression 865′ ± 165 . sin 7/4 (l – 1°). But he attempted no explanation of the phenomenon. It formed, however, the basis of Faye's theory (1865) of the Sun as a gaseous body ploughed through by vertical currents, which finally superseded Herschel's idea of a flame-enveloped, but cool, dark, and even habitable globe.
Carrington's determinations of the elements of the Sun's rotation are still of standard authority. The inclination of the solar equator to the plane of the ecliptic he fixed at 7° 15′; the longitude of the ascending node at 73° 40′ (both for 1850) . A peculiarity in the distribution of sunspots detected by him about the time of the minimum of 1856, afforded, as he said, 'an instructive instance of the regular irregularity and the irregular regularity' characterising solar phenomena (ib. xix. 1). As the minimum approached, the belts of disturbance gradually contracted towards and died out near the equator; shortly after which two fresh series broke out, as if by a completely new impulse, in comparatively high latitudes, and spread equatorially. No satisfactory rationale of this curious procedure has yet been arrived at. It is, nevertheless, intimately related to the course of sunspot development, since Wolf found evidence of a similar behaviour in Böhm's observations of 1833–6, and it was perceived by Spörer and Secchi to recur in 1867.
While still in his apprenticeship at Durham, Carrington repaired to
The great solar storm of 1859
Carrington, independently with fellow amateur Mr. Hodgson, were documenting sunspots and directly witnessed the extraordinary solar outburst of 1 September 1859. Carrington and Hodgson compiled independent reports which were published side by side in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, and exhibited their drawings of the event at the November 1859 meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society.[5][6]
The geomagnetic solar flare hit the Earth the following days, the main body of which fell over the American continents. In these early days of electrical communication, the telegraph systems was the most affected. Lines all over Europe and North America failed, in some cases giving telegraph operators
Late life and demise
But the lease by which he held his powers of useful work was unhappily running out. A severe attack of illness in 1865 left his health permanently impaired. In 1869, he married Rosa Ellen Jeffries (1845–75), and, having disposed of the brewery, he retired to Churt, Surrey, where, on the top of an isolated conical hill, 60 feet high, locally known as the Middle Devil's Jump, in a lonely and picturesque spot, he built a new observatory (ib. xxx. 43). Its chief instrument was a large altazimuth on Steinheil's principle, but there are no records of observations made with it. He no longer attended the meetings of the RAS, and his last communication to it, 10 January 1873, was on the subject of a 'double altazimuth' of great size which he had thoughts of erecting (ib. xxxiii. 118).
A deplorable tragedy, however, supervened. On the morning of 17 November 1875 his wife was found dead in her bed, as it seemed, through an overdose of chloral. The event, combined perhaps with the censure on a supposed deficiency of proper nursing precautions conveyed by the verdict of the coroner's jury, tolled heavily on her husband's spirits. He left his house on the day of the inquest, and returned to it after a week's absence, only to find it deserted by his servants. He was seen to enter it on 27 November, but was never again seen alive. After a time some neighbour gave the alarm, the doors were broken open, and his dead body was found extended on a mattress locked into a remote apartment. A poultice of tea-leaves was tied over the left ear, as if for the relief of pain, and a post-mortem examination showed death to have resulted from an effusion of blood on the brain. A verdict of 'sudden death from natural causes' was returned.
Legacy
Carrington's manuscript books of sunspot observations and reductions, with a folio volume of drawings, were purchased after his death by Lord Lindsay (later Earl of Crawford), and presented to the Royal Astronomical Society (ib. xxxvi. 249). To the same body Carrington bequeathed a sum of £2,000.[4] Among his numerous contributions to scientific collections may be mentioned a paper 'On the Distribution of the Perihelia of the Parabolic and Hyperbolic Comets in relation to the Motion of the Solar System in Space,' read before the Astronomical Society, 14 December 1860 (Mem. R. A. Soc. xxix. 355). The result, like that of Mohn's contemporaneous investigation, proved negative, and was thought to be, through uncontrolled conditions, nugatory; yet it perhaps conveyed an important truth as to the original connection of comets with the solar system.
Work
Even though he did not discover the 11-year sunspot activity cycle, Carrington's observations of sunspot activity after he heard about Heinrich Schwabe's work led to the numbering of the cycles with Carrington's name. For example, the sunspot maximum of 2002 was Carrington Cycle No. 23.
Carrington also determined the elements of the rotation axis of the Sun, based on sunspot motions, and his results remain in use today.
Carrington made the initial observations leading to the establishment of Spörer's law.
Carrington won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) in 1859.
Carrington also won the Lalande Prize of the French Academy of Sciences in 1864, for his Observations of Spots on the Sun from 9 November 1853 to 24 March 1861, Made at Redhill. This award was not reported in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, probably due to Carrington's bitter, acrimonious and public criticism of Cambridge University over the appointment of John Couch Adams, Lowndean Professor of Astronomy and Geometry, as the non-observing Director of the Cambridge Observatory. As a measure of displeasure Carrington withdrew Observations from official considerations of the RAS for what would likely have been the book's second gold medal, for the year 1865.
Carrington super flare
On 1 September 1859, Carrington and
Selected writings
- Carrington, Richard Christopher (1855), Results of Astronomical Observations Made at the Observatory of the University, Durham ..., Durham: W. E. Duncan and Son
- Carrington, Richard Christopher (1857), Catalogue of 3735 Circumpolar Stars, Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans
- Carrington, R. C. (1859), "Description of a Singular Appearance seen in the Sun on September 1, 1859", Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 20: 13–15,
- Carrington, Richard Christopher (1863), Observations of the Spots on the Sun from 1853 to 1861 (1863) Williams and Norgate
This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: Stephen, Leslie, ed. (1887). "Carrington, Richard Christopher". Dictionary of National Biography 9. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
References
- Stephen, Leslie, ed. (1887). . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 9. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
- ^ "Richard Christopher Carrington (1826–1875)". The National Center for Atmospheric Research. Retrieved 1 July 2017.
- ^ a b Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
- S2CID 255072235. Retrieved 30 September 2021.
- ^ a b c d e "Richard Carrington". Solar Storms. Retrieved 6 January 2016.
- ^ Carrington, R.C. (1859). "Description of a singular appearance seen in the Sun on September 1, 1859". .
- ^ .
- ^
Severe Space Weather Events — Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts: A Workshop Report. Committee on the Societal and Economic Impacts of Severe Space Weather Events: A Workshop, National Research Council (Report). National Academies Press. 2008. p. 13. ISBN 978-0-309-12769-1.
- ^
Odenwald, Sten F. (2002). The 23rd Cycle. Columbia University Press. p. 28. ISBN 978-0-231-12079-1– via archive.org.
- ^
Carlowicz, Michael J.; Lopez, Ramon E. (2002). Storms from the Sun: The emerging science of space weather. National Academies Press. p. 58. ISBN 978-0-309-07642-5.
- ^ Philips, Tony (21 January 2009). "Severe space weather — social and economic impacts". Science News. NASA Science (science.nasa.gov). Retrieved 16 February 2011.
- S2CID 239204944. Retrieved 30 September 2021.
- S2CID 241040835.
Further reading
- Ashbrook, Joseph (1984), "Richard Carrington and a "singular appearance" on the Sun", The Astronomical Scrapbook, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Sky Publishing Corporation, pp. 340–344, ISBN 0-933346-24-7– Originally published in the July 1960 issue of Sky & Telescope
- Clark, Stuart (2007), The Sun Kings: The Unexpected Tragedy of Richard Carrington and the Tale of How Modern Astronomy Began, Princeton: Princeton University Press, ISBN 978-0691126609
- Clark, Stuart (2007), "Astronomical fire: Richard Carrington and the solar flare of 1859", Endeavour, 31 (3) (published September 2007): 104–9, PMID 17764743
- Franzel, T. G. (1999), "The Strange and Checkered Career of Carrington's Law: A Century and a Half of Solar Modeling", Physics Essays, 12 (3): 531–569,
- Pang, Alex Soojung (2007), "Sunspotting", American Scientist, 95 (Nov–Dec): 538–540,
- "Richard Christopher Carrington", Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 36 (4): 137–142, 1876, – an obituary
- Charbonneau, Paul. Richard Christopher Carrington (1826–1875) (short biographical sketch), Groupe d'Astrophysique de l'Université de Montréal (University of Montreal), 27 December 2001.
External links
- "Carrington's star billing": an article in The Times Literary Supplement by John North, 24 October 2007
- Biography at High Altitude Observatory at the Wayback Machine (archived 21 February 2006)
- Extensive history and timeline about Carrington by Astronomer Sten Odenwald
- R. Carrington @ Astrophysics Data System