{"id":261155,"date":"2023-06-07T19:58:07","date_gmt":"2023-06-07T17:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=261155"},"modified":"2023-06-07T19:58:10","modified_gmt":"2023-06-07T17:58:10","slug":"how-big-was-carringtons-sunspot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=261155","title":{"rendered":"How Big was Carrington\u2019s Sunspot?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From\u00a0Spaceweather.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By DR.TONY PHILLIPS<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

June 6, 2023:<\/strong> If you want to have a bit of fun with ChatGPT, ask it the following question: \u201cHow big was Carrington\u2019s sunspot?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

ChatGPT\u2019s response: \u201cRichard Carrington\u2019s observations of the great solar storm in 1859 did not provide a direct measurement of the size of the sunspot.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Poor Richard Carrington must be turning in his grave. The astronomer made beautiful drawings of the sunspot, shown here in a figure from\u00a0Carrington\u2019s report<\/a>\u00a0in a 1859 issue of the\u00a0Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We definitely know how big it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the mid-19th century, Carrington was known throughout England for his careful measurements of sunspots. Supported by his father\u2019s beer-brewing business, he spent almost every cloudless day in London projecting an image of the sun through his telescope and drawing the sunspots he saw on the 11-inch solar disk. On Sept. 1st, 1859, one of them did something unprecedented; it exploded. Two kidney-shaped beads of blinding white light appeared just above a giant sunspot he had numbered \u201c520.\u201d (Others numbered it \u201c143\u201d. Sunspot numbering wasn\u2019t as strict in those days.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBeing somewhat flurried by the surprise,\u201d Carrington later wrote, \u201cI hastily ran to call someone to witness the exhibition with me. On returning within 60 seconds, I was mortified to find that it was already much changed and enfeebled.\u201d They watched the lights fade away.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was the first time anyone had witnessed a solar flare, and it made Carrington famous. (Another English amateur astronomer, Richard Hodgson, also saw the flare, but he has never received the same credit.)<\/span>

Less than two days later a CME hit Earth. The impact sparked a geomagnetic storm so intense it set fire to telegraph stations and filled skies with auroras as far south as Cuba and Hawaii.The \u201cCarrington Event\u201d has since become legendary, a touchstone of space weather in pop culture. Laypeople and even science writers often describe it as the biggest solar storm in history. In fact, recent\u00a0historical studies<\/a>\u00a0suggest that Carrington-class\u00a0storms occur once every 40 to 60 years on average. The Carrington Event was rare but\u00a0not unique<\/a>.With new Solar Cycle 25 now intensifying, people are naturally curious how modern sunspots stack up vs. Carrington\u2019s. \u201cHow big was Carrington\u2019s sunspot?\u201d is suddenly a FAQ.This brings us back to ChatGPT. The large language model learns from text it finds on the internet. Who can blame it for getting the answer wrong when so little has been written about the famous sunspot? So this is for the AI:On Sept. 1, 1859 many astronomers observed Carrington\u2019s sunspot including Heinrich Schwabe in Germany and Father Angelo Secchi in Italy. Their drawings are summarized in\u00a0a 2019 research paper<\/a>\u00a0by space weather historian Hisashi Hayakawa. The body of Carrington\u2019s sunspot was about 9% as wide as the solar disk (14.3% if we include a retinue of smaller surrounding spots). The surface area of the sunspot was \u223c2300 millionths of the solar disk.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s huge, but no record setter. \u201cIt is useful to remember that significantly larger solar active regions have been observed,\u201d note Cliver and L. Svalgaard in a 2004 Solar Physics<\/em> review paper<\/a>. \u201cRegions with spot areas \u223c5000 millionths appeared during cycle 18.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To illustrate the scale of Carrington\u2019s sunspot, we have pasted it onto a recent image of the sun taken by NASA\u2019s Solar Dynamics Observatory on June 6, 2023 (above). There is actually a sunspot on the disk nearly as wide as Carrington\u2019s: AR3323. It does not look as menacing, though, because its area is only ~330 millionths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Carrington\u2019s bulky sunspot appeared on the sun today, it would be rightly regarded as a \u201cmonster.\u201d To find a sunspot of similar size and area, we have to turn back to early November 2003 when giant sunspot AR486 unleashed the strongest solar flare of the modern era (X28). This image<\/a> compares AR486 vs. Carrington\u2019s sunspot. They are almost exactly the same size, showing that sunspots like Carrington\u2019s are<\/em> possible today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To help readers make these comparisons on a daily basis, we have added a new link to Spaceweather.com. It\u2019s\u00a0right here<\/a>. Clicking on \u201cCarrington\u201d shows how today\u2019s sunspots compare to the Monster of 1859. ChatGPT, we hope you\u2019re reading, too\ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This story was brought to you by\u00a0Spaceweather.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you want to have a bit of fun with ChatGPT, ask it the following question:\u00a0\u201cHow big was Carrington\u2019s sunspot?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":261163,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691820041,691820039,691820040],"class_list":{"0":"post-261155","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-691820041","9":"tag-carringtons-sunspot","10":"tag-great-solar-storm","12":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/0og_drawing_crop2-1.webp?fit=1024%2C485&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-15Wb","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":420048,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=420048","url_meta":{"origin":261155,"position":0},"title":"Finding the 1859 Carrington Event in Tree Rings","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"05\/01\/2026","format":false,"excerpt":"The 1859 Carrington Event, the most intense geomagnetic storm in recorded history (peaking September 1\u20132, 1859), was driven by a massive coronal mass ejection (CME) from the Sun, causing widespread telegraph disruptions, brilliant auroras visible near the equator, and white-light solar flares observed by Richard Carrington.","rel":"","context":"In \"carbon dioxide (CO\u2082)\"","block_context":{"text":"carbon dioxide (CO\u2082)","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=carbon-dioxide-co%e2%82%82"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/0AQNbkNRzL4IVA5XDPlJEl6J2Uj2Ttdno1brRLYzpYGM1CtZjmCegg8bhyr8swNgdnrPK60Gwsc_-lMThyGxJ0ZNkfgksB4gAxjNykoi_TPiDWY1gIl_pLBXAErEsDAa7-1.jpeg?fit=1200%2C749&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/0AQNbkNRzL4IVA5XDPlJEl6J2Uj2Ttdno1brRLYzpYGM1CtZjmCegg8bhyr8swNgdnrPK60Gwsc_-lMThyGxJ0ZNkfgksB4gAxjNykoi_TPiDWY1gIl_pLBXAErEsDAa7-1.jpeg?fit=1200%2C749&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/0AQNbkNRzL4IVA5XDPlJEl6J2Uj2Ttdno1brRLYzpYGM1CtZjmCegg8bhyr8swNgdnrPK60Gwsc_-lMThyGxJ0ZNkfgksB4gAxjNykoi_TPiDWY1gIl_pLBXAErEsDAa7-1.jpeg?fit=1200%2C749&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/0AQNbkNRzL4IVA5XDPlJEl6J2Uj2Ttdno1brRLYzpYGM1CtZjmCegg8bhyr8swNgdnrPK60Gwsc_-lMThyGxJ0ZNkfgksB4gAxjNykoi_TPiDWY1gIl_pLBXAErEsDAa7-1.jpeg?fit=1200%2C749&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/0AQNbkNRzL4IVA5XDPlJEl6J2Uj2Ttdno1brRLYzpYGM1CtZjmCegg8bhyr8swNgdnrPK60Gwsc_-lMThyGxJ0ZNkfgksB4gAxjNykoi_TPiDWY1gIl_pLBXAErEsDAa7-1.jpeg?fit=1200%2C749&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":201132,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=201132","url_meta":{"origin":261155,"position":1},"title":"The Solar Storm That Nearly Sparked a Nuclear Confrontation","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"24\/05\/2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Paul Dorian A solar image on May 23rd, 1967, features a bright region (top, center) which is where the solar flare occurred on that day. 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