WHO FIRST SPOTTED SUNSPOTS?

WARNING: NEVER LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE SUN.

NEVER LOOK AT IT THROUGH A CAMERA, BINOCULARS OR A TELESCOPE. YOU COULD PERMANENTLY DAMAGE YOUR EYES

The first reports of sunspots date back to the ancient Chinese in 165BC. They had no telescopes, but by looking through smoke from forest fires, they could see that the Sun had very small dots on it.

It wasn't until Galileo (picture courtesy of the Stanford Solar Center) first used his telescope to look at the Sun that sunspots were seen properly. After that, observations of sunspots were made all over the world by lots of scientists. Galileo

(Galileo eventually went blind, so please don't ever look at the Sun without a special protective filter)

This image (courtesy of the Stanford Solar Center) shows one of Galileo's earliest hand-drawings of sunspots he observed on the Sun. The North pole of the Sun is at about 2 o'clock in this drawing. In the early 1600's when Galileo made his observations, people thought that the Sun was perfect and couldn't possibly have dark spots or any other imperfections on it. They suggested that the dark spots observed must be small planets revolving around the Sun.

However, Galileo's observations of sunspots convinced him otherwise, as he saw that sunspots changed their shapes on the solar disk and so could not possibly be planets.

Galileo's ideas got him into trouble with the Catholic Church and, until his death, he was placed under house arrest for his `crime' of suggesting that the Sun was not perfect.

Over the years, further astronomical observations clearly showed that Galileo had been correct, and in 1992 the Catholic Church finally admitted that their treatment of Galileo had been wrong and he was pardoned.