A note on the sunspot and prominence records made by Angelo Secchi during the period 1871–1875

Víctor M S Carrasco,Theodosios Chatzistergos,José M Nogales,Ilaria Ermolli,José M Vaquero

doi:10.1051/swsc/2021033

Abstract

Angelo Secchi (1818–1878) was an Italian Jesuit who made relevant scientific contributions in geophysics, meteorology, and astrophysics. He was a well-known pioneer in solar physics due to his theories and observations. Secchi published Le Soleil (The Sun) a summary of knowledge about our star in that time. Moreover, he published in this book his sunspot and prominence observations made during the period 1871–1875. In this work, we present a machine-readable version of these observations and a preliminary analysis of them.

Highlights

Pietro Angelo Secchi (1818–1878) was an Italian Jesuit who made relevant scientific contributions (Moigno, 1879; Chinnici, 2019; Chinnici & Consolmagno, 2021)
Angelo Secchi (1818–1878) was an Italian Jesuit who made relevant scientific contributions in geophysics, meteorology, and astrophysics. He was a well-known pioneer in solar physics due to his theories and observations
Secchi published Le Soleil (The Sun) a summary of knowledge about our star in that time. He published in this book his sunspot and prominence observations made during the period 1871–1875

Summary

Introduction

Pietro Angelo Secchi (1818–1878) was an Italian Jesuit who made relevant scientific contributions (Moigno, 1879; Chinnici, 2019; Chinnici & Consolmagno, 2021). Between 1848 and 1850, Secchi lived in England and worked at Stonyhurst College with Father Weld, the first director of the observatory of that institution Later, he moved to the United States, where he got his doctorate in theology and taught natural sciences at Georgetown University. There are several published tables of measurements of solar features by Secchi in archival documents (Secchi, 1855, 1864, 1871a, 1871b, 1872) One such summary of his knowledge and observations of the Sun was his book titled “The Sun”. It was first published in 1870 in French as Le Soleil, followed by German, Spanish, and Italian translations in 1872, 1879, and 1884.

Solar Activity Records by Secchi in Le Soleil

A primary analysis of the observations