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.
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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) |
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| 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. |
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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.