Richard Christopher Carrington
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| Richard Christopher Carrington | |
| Born | 26 May 1826 Chelsea, London, England |
|---|---|
| Died | 27 November 1875 Churt, England |
| Nationality | English |
| Fields | Astronomy |
| Known for | Solar observations |
| Notable awards | Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1859 |
Richard Christopher Carrington (26 May 1826 – 27 November 1875) was an English amateur astronomer whose 1859 astronomical observations first corraborated the existence of solar flares as well as their electrical influence upon the Earth and its aurorae; and whose 1863 records of sunspot observations demonstrated differential rotation in the Sun.
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[edit] Life and work
On September 1 1859, Carrington and Richard Hodgson, another English amateur astronomer, independently made the first observations of a solar flare. Because of a simultaneous "crochet" observed in the Kew Observatory magnetometer record by Balfour Stewart and a geomagnetic storm observed the following day, Carrington suspected a solar-terrestrial connection. World wide reports on the effects of the geomagnetic storm of 1859 were compiled and published by Elias Loomis which support the observations of Carrington and Balfour Stewart.
Even though he did not discover the 11-year sunspot activity cycle, his 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 #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 rotation is a system for measuring solar longitude based on his observations of the low-latitude solar rotation rate.
Carrington made the initial observations leading to the establishment of Spörer's law.
He won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) in 1859.
Carrington also won the Prix d'Astronomie, Fondation Lalande, in 1864, for his "Observations of Spots on the Sun from 9 November 1853 to 24 March 1861, Made at Redhill." This award, while certainly of major importance, never was 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 Adams as the non-observing Director of the Cambridge Observatory (added to Adams'pre-existing academic duties as the Lowndean Professor of Astronomy and Geometry.) As measure of displeasure Carrington withdrew the sunspot book from official considerations of the RAS for what would likely have been the books' second Gold Medal, for the year 1865.
[edit] Intrigue at RAS and Cambridge Observatory
The Adams appointment had been recommended by a closed special Syndicate, of which Adams was a voting member. Adams personally received a 250-pound increase in his salary plus rent-free use of the Observatory residence for the remainder of his life—altogether 31 years. Rather amazingly, he was not required to do any actual observing, and had a special, no-fault proviso of being able to quit the Observatory position altogether, should its administrative duties prove to be too much. Since Adams arranged for complete renovation of the Observatory residence immediately following his appointment, (at Cambridge University's expense and costing several times the 250 pound annual Director's salary), it would seem likely that very early on he assigned to that unhappy potential eventuality a rather low probability. The 2 May 1861, formal approval of the Adams Appointment by the Cambridge Senate coincided closely with Carrington's abandonment of his seven and a half year long series of sunspot observations, and in fact was cited explicitly by Carrington in his book as his reason for quitting. Carrington's original intent, quite sensibly, had been to continue the observations through a complete, eleven year, solar cycle.
Possibly as an insurance policy with which to mitigate any subsequent criticism, Adams wisely had gone on record early in the selection process (15 February 1861), as supporting the idea, in principle, that the directorship be made an independent position, rather than continuing to be attached to a professorship which might cause time and energy conflicts due to heavy academic duties, as had seemed to be the case previously. However, in this same early letter, Adams also clearly stipulated his objection to giving the position to a "mere" observer ("mere" was the only underlined word in his letter). In all likelihood this must be interpreted as a reference to Carrington himself, who had achieved only the 36th position as a "wrangler," in his graduating class at Cambridge. The field of potential candidates for the Directorship was extremely small. And Adams, of course, had been senior wrangler in his own examination year. Fortunately, for those wishing to better understand this interesting historical episode, there also exists in the Adams papers a draft of a much later, unsent—and in light of the outcome, unnecessary—letter. In this 27 April 1861, draft-letter Adams clearly addressed his attitude toward potential open competition with Carrington within the Syndicate process. Adams wrote,"As I now find that I cannot be appointed to the directorship without entering into what would at any rate have the aspect of a contest for the office, I beg to be allowed to withdraw my name and to no longer be considered a candidate..." So much for his professed early belief that the "best arrangement" would be for the directorship to be an independent position, rather than attached to a professorship.
No pictures of Carrington are known at present. It is known however that pictures of Carrington had been taken in a "round-robin" project by the RAS at a time when he was actually Secretary of the Society. It is possible that Carrington's picture may have been destroyed later by Adams or associates (precedents are ascribed in the absence of Robert Hooke portraits in other Royal Society archives. Hooke, as an enemy of Issac Newton had the misfortune of pre-deceasing Newton by 25 years. And in Newton's autocratic relations with Flamsteed we have other examples of how theorists at Cambridge denigrated contributions of these "mere observers".)
[edit] Selected writings
- Carrington, Richard Christopher (1855). Results of Astronomical Observations Made at the Observatory of the University, Durham .... Durham: W. E. Duncan and Son. http://books.google.com/books?id=8TQAAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=richard+carrington&as_brr=1#PPT4,M2.
- 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. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1859MNRAS..20...13C.
- Carrington, Richard Christopher. Observations of the Spots on the Sun from 1853 to 1861 (1863) Williams and Norgate.
[edit] 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 0691126607
- Clark, Stuart (2007), "Astronomical fire: Richard Carrington and the solar flare of 1859", Endeavour 31 (3): 104–9, 2007 Sep, doi:, PMID 17764743, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17764743
- Clerke, A.M. (1887), "Biography: Carrington, Richard Christopher (1826-1875), pages 181 to 183", in Leslie Stephen, Dictionary of National Biography, IX, Macmillian and Co., http://books.google.com/books?id=CSwJAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA181
- 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, http://www.americanscientist.org/template/BookReviewTypeDetail/assetid/56139#56208
- "Richard Christopher Carrington", Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 36: 137 – 142, 1876 - an obituary
[edit] External links
- "Carrington's star billing": an article in The Times Literary Supplement by John North, October 24 2007
- Biography at High Altitude Observatory
- Extensive history and timeline about Carrington by Astronomer Sten Odenwald
- NASA - Carrington Super Flare NASA May 6, 2008
