VI/138 Sunspots catalogues, 1853-1870 (Casas+, 2013)
The sunspots catalogues of Carrington, Peters and de la Rue:
quality control and machine-readable versions.
Casas R., Vaquero J.M.
<Solar Physics DOI:10.1007/s11207-013-0342-4 (2014)>
=2013yCat.6138....0C 2013yCat.6138....0C
ADC_Keywords: Sun
Keywords: Sun: sunspots - sun: sunspot positions - sun: historical data
Abstract:
In the 19th century, several astronomers observed sunspots obtaining
their positions and, occasionaly, their areas. These observations were
published in large tables that have remained in the anonymity until
now. The observations made by Richard C. Carrington, Christian H. F.
Peters and Warren de la Rue (and their respective collaborators) were
published in different articles. The total number of positions
evaluated by these three observers was of 26,641 (Carrington: 4,900;
Peters: 14,040; and de la Rue: 7,701). In this work, we transformed
more of 400 pages of numerical tables to a machine readable format.
Moreover, we carried out a cursory analysis to detect possible
mistakes in the reading or in the original transcription.
File Summary:
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FileName Lrecl Records Explanations
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ReadMe 80 . This file
carringt.dat 65 5290 *Sunspot positions calculated by Carrington, 1853-1861
carringt.ori 139 5295 carringt.dat file as "original"
peters.dat 50 14056 Sunspot positions calculated by Peters, 1860-1870
peters.ori 82 16118 peters.dat file as "original"
delarue.dat 92 7702 Sunspot positions calculated by de la Rue, 1862-1866
delarue.ori 150 7711 delarue.dat file as "original"
combdata.dat 50 26806 Sunspots positions based in the previous data files
and calculated with Horizons ephemeris
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Note on carringt.dat: When no spots were found, only Date and Observation
Number are indicated.
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See also:
J/A+A/390/707 : Hemispheric Sunspot Numbers 1975-2000 (Temmer+, 2002)
J/A+A/447/735 : Hemispheric Sunspot Numbers 1945-2004 (Temmer+, 2006)
Byte-by-byte Description of file (#): carringt.dat
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Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
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1- 11 A11 "YYYY/MMM/DD" ObsDate Observation date
13- 19 F7.3 d Day ? Day of the year
21- 24 I4 --- ObsNo Observation number
26- 31 F6.4 Rsun Dist ? Distance to center of solar disk
33- 35 I3 deg PA.d ? Position angle (degrees)
37- 38 I2 arcmin PA.m ? Position angle (minutes)
40- 42 I3 deg Node.d ? Longitude of the node (degrees)
44- 45 I2 arcmin Node.m ? Longitude of the node (minutes)
47- 49 I3 deg HLON.d ? Heliographical longitude (degrees)
51- 52 I2 arcmin HLON.m ? Heliographical longitude (minutes)
54 A1 --- HLAT.- Sign of Heliographic latitude
55- 56 I2 deg HLAT.d ? Heliographical latitude (degrees)
58- 59 I2 arcmin HLAT.m ? Heliographical latitude (minutes)
61 A1 --- --- [(]
62- 64 I3 --- Group ? Group number
65 A1 --- --- [)]
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Byte-by-byte Description of file (#): peters.dat
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Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
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1- 11 A11 "YYYY/MMM/DD" ObsDate Observation date
13- 17 A5 "h:m" ObsTime Observation time
20- 24 F5.1 s Da Hour Angle distance to solar disk center
26- 29 I4 arcsec Dd Declination distance to solar disk center
31 A1 --- HLAT.- Sign of Heliographic latitude
32- 33 I2 deg HLAT.d ? Heliographic latitude (degrees)
35- 36 I2 arcmin HLAT.m ? Heliographic latitude (minutes)
38- 40 I3 deg Node.d ? Longitude of the node (degrees)
42- 43 I2 arcmin Node.m ? Longitude of the node (minutes)
45- 47 I3 deg HLON.d ? Heliographic longitude (degrees)
49- 50 I2 arcmin HLON.m ? Heliographic longitude (minutes)
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Byte-by-byte Description of file (#): delarue.dat
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Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
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1- 11 A11 "YYYY/MMM/DD" Date Observation date
13- 16 I4 --- ObsNo Observation number
18- 24 F7.3 d Day ? Day of the year
26- 29 A4 --- Group Group number
30 A1 --- n_Group [*]
32- 36 F5.3 Rsun Dist ? Distance to center of solar disk
38- 40 I3 deg PA.d ? Position angle (degrees)
42- 45 F4.1 arcmin PA.m ? Position angle (minutes)
47- 49 I3 deg Node.d ? Longitude of the node (degrees)
51- 54 F4.1 arcmin Node.m ? Longitude of the node (minutes)
56- 58 I3 deg HLON.d ? Heliographical longitude (degrees)
60- 61 I2 arcmin HLON.m ? Heliographical longitude (minutes)
63 A1 --- HLAT.- Sign of Heliographic latitude
64- 65 I2 deg HLAT.d ? Heliographical latitude (degrees)
67- 68 I2 arcmin HLAT.m ? Heliographical latitude (minutes)
70- 92 A23 --- Note Note on the observation
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Byte-by-byte Description of file: combdata.dat
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Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
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1- 3 A3 --- Observer Observer: CAR=Carrington, PET=Peters,
RUE=de la Rue
6- 9 I4 --- ObsNo Observation number, "0000" for PET
12- 21 A10 "YYYY/MM/DD" ObsDate Observation date
24- 28 A5 "h:m" ObsTime Observation time
31- 34 A4 --- Group Group number, "0000" for PET
37- 42 F6.2 deg HLON Heliographic longitude
45- 50 F6.2 deg HLAT Heliographic latitude
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Acknowledgements:
Ricard Casas, casas(at)ice.cat
History:
* 13-Jul-2013: on-line version
* 10-Oct-2013: Update of carringt.dat and combdata.dat files (from author)
(End) Ricard Casas [ICE (IEEC-CSIC)], Patricia Vannier [CDS] 07-Jan-2013