Sunspot areas and tilt angles for solar cycles 7-10

TL;DR

This study estimates sunspot areas and tilt angles for solar cycles 7-10 from historical Schwabe observations, providing insights into past solar activity and contributing to understanding the solar dynamo.

Contribution

It introduces a method to convert historical sunspot drawings into physical areas and estimates tilt angles without polarity data, extending solar cycle analysis into the 19th century.

Findings

Sunspot areas correlate with sunspot number.

Average tilt angle is approximately 5.85 degrees.

Methodology accounts for uncertainties in historical data.

Abstract

Extending the knowledge about the properties of solar cycles into the past is essential for understanding the solar dynamo. This paper aims at estimating areas of sunspots observed by Schwabe in 1825-1867 and at calculating the tilt angles of sunspot groups. The sunspot sizes in Schwabe's drawings are not to scale and need to be converted into physical sunspot areas. We employed a statistical approach assuming that the area distribution of sunspots was the same in the 19th century as it was in the 20th century. Umbral areas for about 130,000 sunspots observed by Schwabe were obtained, as well as the tilt angles of sunspot groups assuming them to be bipolar. There is, of course, no polarity information in the observations. The annually averaged sunspot areas correlate reasonably with sunspot number. We derived an average tilt angle by attempting to exclude unipolar groups with a minimum separation of the two alleged polarities and an outlier rejection method which follows the evolution of each group and detects the moment it turns unipolar at its decay. As a result, the tilt angles, although displaying considerable scatter, place the leading polarity on average 5.85+-0.25 closer to the equator, in good agreement with tilt angles obtained from 20th-century data sets. Sources of uncertainties in the tilt angle determination are discussed and need to be addressed whenever different data sets are combined. The sunspot area and tilt angle data are provided online.