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The Sunspot Catalogues of Carrington, Peters and de la Rue: Quality Control and Machine-Readable Versions

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Abstract

In the 19th century, several astronomers made observations of sunspots, recording their positions and sometimes their areas. These observations were published in the form of extensive tables, but have been unhelpful until now. Three of these observers were Richard C. Carrington, Christian H.F. Peters and Warren de la Rue (and their respective collaborators). They published, in various articles, the data corresponding to 26 641 sunspot positions (Carrington, Peters and de la Rue registered 4900, 14040 and 7701 sunspot positions, respectively). In this paper we present a translation of more than 400 pages of their printed numerical tables into a machine readable format, including an initial analysis targeted at detecting possible mistakes in the reading or in the original transcription. The observations carried out by these three astronomers have been made available at the Centre de Donées Astronomiques de Strasbourg ( http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/cgi-bin/VizieR?-source=VI/138 ).

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Notes

  1. http://archive.org/details/observationsofsp00carr .

  2. http://archive.org/details/heliographicposi00peterich .

  3. http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/159/1.full.pdf .

  4. http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/160/389.full.pdf .

  5. http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/cgi-bin/VizieR?-source=VI/138 .

  6. http://segre.ice.cat/casas/sun/ .

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Acknowledgements

Ricard Casas acknowledges the financial support received from the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MICINN), project AYA2009-13936, Consolider-Ingenio CSD2007-00060 and research project 2009SGR1398 from the Generalitat de Catalunya. José M. Vaquero acknowledges financial support from the Junta de Extremadura (Research Group Grant No. GR10131) and the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad of the Spanish Government (AYA2011-25945).

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Casas, R., Vaquero, J.M. The Sunspot Catalogues of Carrington, Peters and de la Rue: Quality Control and Machine-Readable Versions. Sol Phys 289, 79–90 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11207-013-0342-4

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