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12 Apr 1851
Edward Walter Maunder |
birth Edward Walter Maunder Born 12 Apr 1851; died 21 Mar 1928 at age 76. English astronomer who was the first to take the British Civil Service Commission examination for the post of photographic and spectroscopic assistant at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. For the next forty years that he worked there, he made extensive measurements of sunspots. Checking historical records, he found a period from 1645 to 1715 that had a remarkable lack of reports on sunspots. Although he might have questioned the accuracy of the reporting, he instead attributed the shortage of report to an actual dearth of sunspots during that period. Although his suggestion was not generally accepted at first, accumulating research has since indicated there are indeed decades-long times when the sun has notably few sunspots. These periods are now known as Maunder minima. |
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12 Apr 1851
E. Walter Maunder |
birth E. Walter Maunder E. Walter Maunder (died 1928), astronomer. |
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