Timeline solar research

The time table for solar research lists the experiments and results of solar research in chronological order.

Antiquity

• 450 BC BC - Herakleides von Pontus describes a solar system in which some of the planets orbit the sun, but the sun in turn revolves around the earth.
• 3rd century BC Chr. - Aristarchus of Samos is on one of the first, the hypothesis that the sun is the center of our solar system is.

16th Century

• 1530 - Nicolaus Copernicus places the sun in the center of the solar system.

17th century

• In the 17th century solar observation with telescopes begins .
• 1610 - Galileo Galilei in Padua and Johannes Fabricius in Wittenberg observe sunspots independently of each other for the first time. Galileo concluded, contrary to an Aristotelian doctrine that was then considered valid, that the sun is not unchangeable.
• 1613 - Galileo Galilei shows by observing the sunspots that the sun has a rotation of its own.
• 1619 - Johannes Kepler postulates a force that explains the direction of the tail of comets (→  solar wind ).

19th century

• In the 19th century, the systematic observation of the sun began as part of observation programs.
• 1802 - William Hyde Wollaston describes dark lines in the solar spectrum ( absorption lines ).
• 1814 - Joseph von Fraunhofer systematically investigates the absorption lines of the solar spectrum.
• 1844 - Samuel Heinrich Schwabe discovers the sunspot cycle and estimates the time period to be around 10 years.
• 1851 - 1861 - Introduction of the sunspot relative number , since then daily observation and counting of sunspots.
• 1851 - First photograph of the solar corona during a total solar eclipse
• 1852 - Edward Sabine shows that the number of sunspots correlates with the change in the earth's magnetic field.
• 1854 - Hermann von Helmholtz suggests the contraction of solar gas due to gravity as the sun's energy source (→  Kelvin-Helmholtz contraction ).
• 1859 - Richard Carrington discovers solar flares during the solar storm of 1859 .
• 1859 - Gustav Kirchhoff and Robert Wilhelm Bunsen apply their discovery of the element-specific spectral lines to the solar spectrum.
• 1862 - Lord Kelvin incorrectly calculates the age of the sun to be well below 100 million years. Even when clear evidence of older age is discovered towards the beginning of the 20th century, he insists on the correctness of his hypothesis.
• 1863 - Richard Carrington describes the differential rotation of the sun.
• 1868 - First protuberance at the edge of the sun not observed during a solar eclipse .
• 1890 - George Ellery Hale starts developing the spectroheliograph and receives the first usable spectroheliograms a few years later.
• 1897 - Henry Augustus Rowland completed his atlas of the solar spectrum, which contains all the Fraunhofer lines.

20th century

• 1906 - Karl Schwarzschild publishes a stability criterion with which the equilibrium of the sun and its structure in radiation and convection zones can be explained; he watches the darkening of the sun's edges .
• 1908 - George Ellery Hale discovers the splitting of the spectral lines in sunspots ( Zeeman effect ), the proof of a connection between magnetic fields and sunspots.
• 1920 - Arthur Stanley Eddington suggests subatomic processes, annihilation, or pair creation , as an explanation for the sun's energy release , which would allow the sun to last billions of years.
• 1933 - Bernard Ferdinand Lyot observes the sun's corona for the first time outside of an eclipse.
• 1935 - Max Waldmeier describes a connection between the maximum sunspot and the length of the ascent and descent in the sunspot cycle, the Waldmeier effect .
• 1938 - With the rise of quantum mechanics , research focuses on atomic pair formation ; Hans Bethe and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker develop theories of the fusion of hydrogen and helium nuclei (→  nuclear fusion ) as a solar energy source.
• 1942 - James Stanley Hey (1909–2000) discovers radio emissions from the sun.
• 1949 - Herbert Friedman discovers X-rays from the sun.
• 1962 - Robert B. Leighton discovers the oscillations, first step towards helioseismology .
• 1968 - Raymond Davis Jr. discovers neutrinos that are produced by nuclear reactions inside the sun.
• 1995 - The SOHO space probe takes off to Lagrange point L1, where it has been observing the sun with twelve instruments since then.

21st century

• 2002 - The RHESSI satellite investigates flares in the area of ​​X-ray and gamma radiation with high spatial and spectral resolution.
• 2006 - NASA's STEREO space probe is launched and is intended to research the development and interplanetary consequences of solar eruptions.

See also

• Astronomy time table

literature

• Karl Hufbauer: Solar Physics . In: John Lankford (ed.): History of Astronomy: An Encyclopedia . Routledge, 2013, ISBN 978-1-136-50834-9 , pp. 464-471 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} David Leverington: Chapter 3 - A History of Solar System Studies . In: Lucy-Ann McFadden, Torrence Johnson, Paul Weissman (Eds.): Encyclopedia of the Solar System . Elsevier, 2006, ISBN 978-0-08-047498-4 , pp. 53-70 , doi : 10.1016 / B978-0-12-415845-0.00047-5 .
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l} Karl Hufbauer: Solar Physics . In: History of Astronomy: An Encyclopedia . Routledge, 2013, pp. 464-471 .
3. ^ Govert Schilling: Atlas of Astronomical Discoveries . Springer, 2011, ISBN 978-1-4419-7811-0 , pp. 17-18 .
4. ↑ ^{a b c d e} J. B. Hearnshaw: The Analysis of Starlight: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Astronomical Spectroscopy . Cambridge University Press, 1990, ISBN 978-0-521-39916-6 , pp. 23-26 44-47, 232, 338 .
5. ↑ ^{a b} Alan Julian Izenman: JK Wolf and HA Wolfer: An Historical Note on the Zurich Sunspot Relative Numbers . In: Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A (General) . May 1983, doi : 10.2307 / 2981658 .
6. ↑ Reinhard Schielicke, Reinhard, Axel D. Wittmann: On the Berkowski daguerreotype (Königsberg, 1851 July 28): the first correctly-exposed photograph of the solar corona . In: Acta Historica Astronomiae . tape 25 , 2005, pp. 128-147 ( harvard.edu ).
7. ^ ^{A b} Crosbie Smith, M. Norton Wise: Energy and Empire: A Biographical Study of Lord Kelvin . Cambridge University Press, 1989, ISBN 978-0-521-26173-9 , 15 The age of the sun controversies, pp. 526, 550 .
8. ↑ Alex S.–K. Pang: Solar Eclipses . In: History of Astronomy: An Encyclopedia . Routledge, 2013, pp. 263 .
9. ↑ ^{a b} Karl Hufbauer, John Lankford: Hale, George Ellery (1868-1938) . In: History of Astronomy: An Encyclopedia . Routledge, 2013, pp. 249-251 .
10. ↑ Biography of Karl Schwarzschild (1873-1916) (= Hans-Heinrich Voigt [Hrsg.]: Karl Schwarzschild - Collected Works . Volume 1 ). Springer, 2013, ISBN 978-3-642-58086-4 , pp. 105-106 .
11. ↑ Suzanne Dlbarbat: France, Astronomy . In: History of Astronomy: An Encyclopedia . Routledge, 2013, pp. 215 .
12. ↑ Max Waldmeier: New properties of the sunspot curve . In: Astronomical communications from the Swiss Federal Observatory, Zurich . tape 14 , 1935, pp. 105-136 ( harvard.edu ).
13. ↑ James M. Lattis: Germany, Astronomy in . In: History of Astronomy: An Encyclopedia . Routledge, 2013, pp. 234 .
14. ^ Woodruff T. Sullivan III: Radio Astronomy . In: History of Astronomy: An Encyclopedia . Routledge, 2013, pp. 428 .
15. ↑ Arnab Rai Choudhuri: Nature's Third Cycle: A Story of sunspots . Oxford University Press, 2015, ISBN 978-0-19-967475-6 , pp. 72-75, 266 , doi : 10.1093 / acprof: oso / 9780199674756.001.0001 .
16. ↑ Karl Hufbauer: Stellar Energy Problem . In: History of Astronomy: An Encyclopedia . Routledge, 2013, pp. 493 .
17. ↑ About the SOHO Mission. In: SOHO website. Retrieved June 7, 2020 .