When were sunspots first seen?

NEVER LOOK AT THE SUN DIRECTLY
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 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 eventually went blind, so please take notice of the warning at the top of this page)

Galileo


This image 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. Galileo's sketch of sunspots



In the early 1600's when Galileo made his observations, people thought that the Sun was perfect and so couldn't have dark spots on it. They thus proposed that the dark spots observed must be small planets revolving around the Sun.

Galileo's observations of sunspots convinced him otherwise, however, as he saw that sunspots changed their shapes on the solar disk and so could not be planets. His ideas got him into trouble with the Roman Catholic Church at the time as they believed that the Sun must be perfect. Galileo was placed under house arrest until his death for his `crime'.

In 1992, the Roman Catholic Church finally admitted that their treatment of Galileo had been wrong.

In 1844, a man called Heinrich Schwabe noticed that sunspots are most common about every 11 years. This discovery led to a world wide effort to observe sunspots. A very accurate record has been kept from that time to this day, and is probably the oldest world-wide team effort in science.

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