Solar cycle 1 was the first

solar cycle The Solar cycle, also known as the solar magnetic activity cycle, sunspot cycle, or Schwabe cycle, is a periodic 11-year change in the Sun's activity measured in terms of Modern Maximum, variations in the number of observed sunspots on the Sun ...

during which extensive recording of solar

sunspot Sunspots are temporary spots on the Sun's surface that are darker than the surrounding area. They are one of the most recognizable Solar phenomena and despite the fact that they are mostly visible in the solar photosphere they usually aff ...

activity took place. The solar cycle lasted 11.3 years, beginning in February 1755 and ending in June 1766. The maximum

smoothed sunspot number The Wolf number (also known as the relative sunspot number or Zürich number) is a quantity that measures the number of sunspots and groups of sunspots present on the surface of the Sun. Historically, it was only possible to detect sunspots on t ...

observed during the solar cycle was 144.1 (June 1761), and the starting minimum was 14.0. Solar cycle 1 was discovered by Johann Rudolph Wolf who, inspired by the discovery of the solar cycle by

Heinrich Schwabe Samuel Heinrich Schwabe (25 October 1789 – 11 April 1875) was a German amateur astronomer remembered for his work on sunspots. He observed sunspots and made drawings of them from 1825 to 1867 and suggested in 1838 that there may be a ten-year cy ...

in 1843, collected all available sunspot observations going back to the first telescopic observations by

Galileo Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642), commonly referred to as Galileo Galilei ( , , ) or mononymously as Galileo, was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a poly ...

. He was able to improve Schwabe's estimate of the mean length of the cycle from about a decade to 11.11 years. However, he could not find enough observations before 1755 to reliably identify cycles, hence the 1755–1766 cycle is conventionally numbered as cycle 1. Wolf published his results in 1852.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Solar Cycle 01 Solar cycles 1755 in science 1756 in science

See also

References