Harriot's first sunspot observations
Entries from the notebooks of Thomas Harriot, dated 8 December1610. This is the earliest know pictorial record of sunspots.Harriot left nearly 200 drawings of sunspots from the period1610-1612.Reproduced from the paper byW.M. Mitchell cited below.The text for December 8 reads:
"Decemb. 8 mane ho. That altitude of the sonne being 7 or 8 degrees.It being a frost & a mist. I saw the sonne in this manner. Instrument 10/1 B.I saw it twise of thrise. once with the right ey & other time with the left.In the space of a minutes time. after the sonne was too cleare"
Interestingly, the text does not mention the spots explicitly, eventhough they are clearly indicated on the drawing.Like the Fabricius father and son teambut unlikeGalileo andScheiner, Harriot observedthe sun directly through his telescope. His observations wereconsequently limited to the hour following sunrise, when, as seenfrom Harriot's residence in Syon, the Sunwas greatly dimmed by mist and fog over the river Thames.
Bibliography:
Mitchell, W.M. 1916, The History of the discovery of thesolar spot, Popular Astronomy, 22-ff.
Shirley, J.W. 1982, Thomas Harriot: a biography,Oxford: Oxford University Press.