History of observation

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The existence of features on the Sun was known from the records of sunspots observed by ancient astronomers with the naked eye; however, no systematic studies were made of such features until the telescope was invented in the early 17th century. The Italian scientist Galileo Galilei and the German mathematician Christoph Scheiner were among the first to make telescopic observations of sunspots. Scheiner’s drawings in the Rosa Ursina are of almost modern quality, and there was little improvement in solar imaging until 1905. In the 1670s the British astronomer John Flamsteed and the French astronomer Gian Domenico Cassini calculated the distance to the Sun. Sir Isaac Newton set forth the role of the Sun as the centre of attraction of the known planetary system.

While the quality of observations was good, consistent observation was lacking. The sunspot cycle, a huge effect, was not discovered until 1843 by Samuel Heinrich Schwabe. The German amateur astronomer was looking for a planet inside the orbit of Mercury and made careful daily drawings to track its passage across the face of the Sun. Instead he found that the number of sunspots varied with a regular period. The Swiss astronomer Rudolf Wolf confirmed Schwabe’s discovery by searching through previous reports of sunspots and established the period as 11 years. Wolf also introduced what is termed the Zurich relative sunspot number, a value equal to the sum of the spots plus 10 times the number of groups, which is still used today. Much of the work at this time was carried out by wealthy amateurs such as Richard Christopher Carrington of Britain, who built a private observatory and discovered the differential rotation and the equatorward drift of activity during a sunspot cycle. He also was the first (with another Englishman, R. Hodgson) to observe a solar flare. Photographic monitoring began in 1860, and soon spectroscopy was applied to the Sun, so the elements present and their physical state could begin to be investigated. In the early part of the 19th century, Fraunhofer mapped the solar spectrum. At the end of the 19th century, spectroscopy carried out during eclipses revealed the character of the atmosphere, but the million-degree coronal temperature was not established until observations of coronal spectral lines were made in 1940 by the German astrophysicist Walter Grotrian.

In 1891, while he was a senior at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, George Ellery Hale invented the spectroheliograph, which can be used to take pictures of the Sun in any single wavelength. After using the instrument on the great Yerkes refractor in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, U.S., Hale developed the Mount Wilson Observatory in California and built the first solar tower telescopes there. Prior to the construction of the Mount Wilson facility, all solar observatories were located in cloudy places, and long-term studies were not possible. Hale discovered the magnetic fields of sunspots by observing the splitting of their spectral lines into a number of components; this splitting, known as the Zeeman effect, occurs in the presence of a strong magnetic field. By continuously studying the spots for two cycles, he discovered, with the American astronomer Seth Barnes Nicholson, the law of sunspot polarities. Later, in 1953, the American father-and-son team of astronomers Harold and Horace Babcock, working with the same instruments, developed the magnetograph, with which the polar field was detected. In the 1930s the French astronomer Bernard Lyot introduced the coronagraph, which made possible spectral observations of the corona when the Sun is not in eclipse, and the birefringent filter, which permitted two-dimensional monochromatic images. With the Lyot filter, cinematography of the solar activity of magnetic and velocity fields became a reality. In the 1960s the American astronomer Robert Leighton modified Hale’s spectroheliograph so that it could measure both velocities and magnetic fields and with it discovered solar oscillations.

After 1950, new observatories were established in areas that were less cloudy. By 1960 astronomers realized that these sites not only had to be clear but that they also had to have stable air. By locating observatories near lakes and by employing electronic imaging and vacuum telescopes, astronomers were able to make new, higher-resolution observations. In 1969 the movement began with the Aerospace Corporation Observatory (now the San Fernando Observatory) and the Big Bear Solar Observatory, both in California. Free of ground effects, these observatories achieved a new level of stable images and were soon followed by lake-sited solar observatories in India and China.

An entirely new dimension of solar studies was initiated by the space age. With one or two exceptions, all of the important spectral lines from the chromosphere and corona are in the ultraviolet, and since the photosphere is relatively weak in the ultraviolet, it is easy to disentangle the images of the upper layer from the powerful visible radiation of the photosphere. Moreover, satellites sampling the solar particles have the ability to monitor directly solar waves and particles that do not reach the ground. However, the task is not easy. Ultraviolet optics demanded special coatings and films (now charge-coupled devices) for observing. Special solar trackers were required to keep the image steady, and good telemetry was needed for the large data flow. For the corona, special coronagraphs were developed, with a series of occulting disks in front of an ultraclean lens. For X-rays, a high rate of photon detections per unit time was required to avoid early problems with pulse pile-up. The development of instruments to study the Sun also benefited the creation of satellites that explored beyond the solar system.

The U.S. Orbiting Solar Observatory series of satellites (OSO 1–8, launched from 1962 to 1975) made the first observations of X-rays and gamma rays from solar flares. They also were the first to observe gamma rays emitted from nuclear reactions in flares and to use an externally occulted coronagraph to view coronal mass ejections. A huge advance in resolution came with Skylab, a manned U.S. space station that used leftover hardware from the Apollo project. Skylab produced the first high-resolution images in the ultraviolet lines as well as the first X-ray images of the corona. The Skylab images displayed the coronal holes for the first time, and the timing of their disk passage showed their role as a source of high-speed solar wind streams and geomagnetic disturbances.

The next important spacecraft was the U.S. Solar Maximum Mission (SMM), launched in 1980. New technological developments permitted greatly improved data, particularly on the solar-cycle dependence of the solar constant. Hard X-ray data could be obtained without saturation. In 1981 SMM’s attitude control system malfunctioned, and the SMM mission was suspended until 1984 when it was repaired by the space shuttle Challenger.

Japan launched two very successful satellites, Hinotori and Yohkoh, in 1981 and 1991, respectively. Hinotori obtained the first measurements of a superthermal (30,000,000–40,000,000 K) cloud produced by solar flares, which is the source of the soft X-ray burst accompanying all solar flares. Yohkoh produced continuous images of the corona in soft X-rays, detected and located hard X-ray bursts, and produced important soft X-ray spectra.

The European Space Agency spacecraft Ulysses, launched in 1990, was the first space probe to travel in a polar orbit around the Sun. It discovered that the solar wind speed does not increase continuously toward the poles but rather levels off at high latitudes at 750 kilometres (450 miles) per second.

There are several satellites actively observing the Sun. The U.S. satellites Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) and Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE), launched in 1995 and 1998, respectively, have produced many important results. SOHO can observe the Sun continuously, and, among its many discoveries, it has found that sunspots are shallow and that the solar wind flows outward by waves in vibrating magnetic field lines. TRACE is a powerful tool for exploring the chromosphere-corona interface and has found that much of the heating in the corona takes place at its base. The Japanese spacecraft Hinode, launched in 2006, discovered magnetic waves in the solar chromosphere that drive the solar wind. The two spacecraft of the U.S. Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) mission, also launched in 2006, form a 90° angle with the Sun in order to make stereoscopic images of it. The U.S. satellite Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), launched in 2010, carries three instruments that observe the Sun every 10–50 seconds to study changes that previously launched satellites were not able to observe.