Richard Christopher Carrington
Born	May 26, 1826 Chelsea, London, England
Died	November 27, 1875 Churt, England
Nationality	English
Fields	Astronomy
Known for	Solar observations
Notable awards	Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1859

Richard Christopher Carrington (May 26, 1826 – November 27, 1875) was an English amateur astronomer who discovered the differential rotation of the sun by means of sunspot observations in 1863.

Life and work

Sunspots of September 1, 1859 as sketched by Richard Carrington

In 1859, Carrington and Richard Hodgson, another English amateur astronomer, independently made the first observations of a solar flare. Because of a simultaneous "crochet" observed in the Kew Observatory magnetometer record by Balfour Stewart and a geomagnetic storm observed the following day, Carrington suspected a solar-terrestrial connection. World wide reports on the effects of the geomagnetic storm of 1859 were compiled and published by Elias Loomis which support the observations of Carrington and Balfour Stewart.

Even though he did not discover the 11-year sunspot activity cycle, his observations of sunspot activity after he heard about Heinrich Schwabe's work led to the numbering of the cycles with Carrington's name. For example, the sunspot maximum of 2002 was Carrington Cycle #23.

Carrington also determined the elements of the rotation axis of the Sun, based on sunspot motions, and his results remain in use today. Carrington rotation is a system for measuring solar longitude based on his observations of the low-latitude solar rotation rate.

Carrington made the initial observations leading to the establishment of Spörer's law.

He won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1859.

No pictures of Carrington are known at present.

Selected writings

• Carrington, Richard Christopher (1855). Results of Astronomical Observations Made at the Observatory of the University, Durham .... Durham: W. E. Duncan and Son. 

• Catalogue of 3735 Circumpolar Stars (1857)

• Carrington, R. C. (1859). "Description of a Singular Appearance seen in the Sun on September 1, 1859". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 20: 13 – 15. 

• Observations of the Spots on the Sun from 1853 to 1861 (1863)

Further reading

• Clerke, A.M. (1887). "Biography: Carrington, Richard Christopher (1826-1875), pages 181 to 183", in Leslie Stephen: Dictionary of National Biography IX. Macmillian and Co.. 

• Clark, Stuart (2007), The Sun Kings: The Unexpected Tragedy of Richard Carrington and the Tale of How Modern Astronomy Began, Princeton: Princeton University Press, ISBN 0691126607 

• Clark, Stuart (2007), "Astronomical fire: Richard Carrington and the solar flare of 1859", Endeavour 31(3): 104–9, 2007 Sep, doi:10.1016/j.endeavour.2007.07.004, PMID:17764743, <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17764743> 

• Pang, Alex Soojung (2007), "Sunspotting", American Scientist 95(Nov-Dec): 538 – 540, <http://www.americanscientist.org/template/BookReviewTypeDetail/assetid/56139#56208> 

• "Richard Christopher Carrington", Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 36: 137 – 142, 1876  - an obituary

External links

• "Carrington's star billing": an article in The Times Literary Supplement by John North, October 24 2007
• Biography at High Altitude Observatory
• Extensive history and timeline about Carrington by Astronomer Sten Odenwald
• NASA - Carrington Super Flare NASA May 6, 2008