National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Marshall Space Flight Center
Hinode (Solar-B)
Solar History Timeline
New Technologies & Ideas
NASA/MSFC:NSSTC (Dr. David Hathaway)
1609 - Galileo uses telescope to study sunspots
1619 - Report of naked-eye sunspot by Chinese
1621 - Pierre Gassendi first uses the term 'Aurora Borealis'
1624 - Report of naked-eye sunspot by Chinese
1638 - Report of naked-eye sunspot by Chinese
1645 - Maunder Sunspot Minimum starts
1715 - Earliest sketch of solar corona
1716 - Dramatic aurora seen in England
1722 - George Graham discovers that compass needle always in motion
1740 - Anders Celcius and Olof Hoiter discover magnetic storms
1770 - Wilcke discovers aurora aligned with magnetic field of Earth
1777 - Mairan proposes aurora caused by earth entering Zodiacal light
1833 - Ross proposes aurora are light reflected from polar ice and snow
1848 - Auroral 'earth currents' disrupt telegraph lines worldwide
1851 - Heinreich Schwabe discovers the 11-year sunspot cycle
1856 - Edward Sabine discovers aurora connected to sunspot cycle
1856 - Olmstead concludes aurora caused by events external to earth
1859 - Visible solar flare sighted by Carrington and Hodgson
1860 - Elias Loomis maps out the auroral oval zone on earth
1860 - Coronal Mass Ejection first spotted during a total solar eclipse
1872 - Great Aurora seen in India, Cuba, Paris...
1879 - George Ellis offers first space weather forecast
1881 - Prof. De La Rue creates artificial aurora in a vacuum tube
1882 - Henry Draper reveals solar spectrum, not incandescent gas
1882 - Balfour Stewart proposes auroral currents in upper atmosphere
1889 - Veeder discovers that major aurora can reoccur every 27-days
1892 - George Ellery Hale invents spectroheliograph to study solar flares
1894 - Great Aurora
1898 - Kristian Berkelund proposes electrical rays from sun cause aurora
1902 - Kennely and Heavyside propose 'ionosphere' layer
1908 - George Ellery Hale detects intense magnetic fields near sunspots
1908 - Great Aurora
1909 - Birkeland creates a Terella to mimic aurora
1915 - 'wireless outage' in Northern Europe caused by an aurora
1918 - Sydney Chapman describes magnetic field of sun and earth as system
1919 - Whistlers heard for first time in World War I
1920 - Great Aurora
1921 - Major aurora seen world-wide
1923 - Babcock and McLennan identify auroral 'green' light as Oxygen III
1925 - Beginning of studies of short-wave disruptions
1925 - Appleton and Barnett detect the ionosphere layer
1926 - Great Aurora
1934 - Hale publishes detailed study of solar flares
1937 - The term 'solar flare' appears for the first time in newspaper
1938 - Great Aurora
The Origin of the Cosmos, Earth, Sun, and Humans
New Technologies & Ideas
- NASA Contact: Sabrina Savage
- Page Last Updated: Monday, 01 October 2012