Page:A short history of astronomy(1898).djvu/465

§ 298] moon round the earth and of Japetus round Saturn (chapter, § 267)—could be easily explained as the result of tidal action at some past time when the planets were to a great extent fluid.

298. Telescopic study of the surface of the sun during the century has resulted in an immense accumulation of detailed knowledge of peculiarities of the various markings on the surface. The most interesting results of a general nature are connected with the distribution and periodicity of sun-spots. The earliest telescopists had noticed that the number of spots visible on the sun varied from time to time, but no law of variation was established till 1851, when Heinrich Schwabe of Dessau(1789–1875) published in Humboldt's Cosmos the results of observations of sun-spots carried out during the preceding quarter of a century, shewing that the number of spots visible increased and decreased in a tolerably regular way in a period of about ten years.

Earlier records and later observations have confirmed the general result, the period being now estimated as slightly over 11 years on the average, though subject to considerable fluctuations. A year later (1852) three independent investigators. Sir Edward Sabine (1788–1883) in England, Rudolf Wolf (1816–1893) and Alfred Gaufier (1793–1881) in Switzerland, called attention to the remarkable similarity between the periodic variations of sun-spots and of various magnetic disturbances on the earth. Not only is the period the same, but it almost invariably happens that when spots are most numerous on the sun magnetic disturbances are most noticeable on the earth, and that similarly the times of scarcity of the two sets of phenomena coincide. This wholly unexpected and hitherto quite unexplained relationship has been confirmed by the occurrence on several occasions of decided magnetic disturbances simultaneously with rapid changes on the surface of the sun.

A long series of observations of the position of spots on the sun undertaken by Richard Christopher Carrington (1826–1875) led to the first clear recognition of the difference in the rate of rotation of the different parts of the surface of the sun, the period of rotation being fixed (1859) at about 25 days at the equator, and two and a half days longer half-way between the equator and the poles; while 25