The Sunspot Catalogues of Carrington, Peters, and de la Rue: Quality Control and Machine-readable Versions

TL;DR

This paper converts 19th-century sunspot observation tables from Carrington, Peters, and de la Rue into machine-readable formats and analyzes them for transcription errors, enhancing accessibility for solar research.

Contribution

It provides the first machine-readable versions of extensive historical sunspot data and includes an initial quality control analysis of the transcribed records.

Findings

Identification of transcription errors in historical data

Enhanced accessibility of 19th-century sunspot observations

Availability of data at CDS Strasbourg

Abstract

In the 19th century, several astronomers made observations of sunspots, recording their positions and sometimes their areas. These observations were published in the form of extensive tables, but have been unhelpful until now. Three of these observers were Richard C. Carrington, Christian H. F. Peters, and Warren de la Rue (and their respective collaborators). They published, in various articles the data corresponding to 26 641 sunspot positions (Carrington, Peters, and de la Rue registered 4 900, 14 040, and 7 701 sunspot positions, respectively). In this paper we present a translation of more than 400 pages of their printed numerical tables into a machine readable format, including an initial analysis targeted at detecting possible mistakes in the reading or in the original transcription. The observations carried out by these three astronomers have been made available at the Centre de Don\'ees Astronomiques de Strasbourg (http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/cgi-bin/VizieR?-source=VI/138).