ASTR 1020 - Lab 4: Solar Rotation and Sunspots
Overview
Galileo, in 1612, demonstrated that the Sun rotates on its axis with a rotation period of approximately one month. Our star turns in a west-to-east direction, like the orbital motions of the planets. The Sun, however, is a gas and does not have to rotate rigidly, the way a solid body like Earth does. Modern observations show that the Sun’s rotation speed varies according to latitude; that is, it’s different as you go north or south of the Sun’s equator.
Between 1826 and 1850, Heinrich Schwabe, a German pharmacist and amateur astronomer kept daily records of the number of sunspots. What he was looking for was a planet inside the orbit of Mercury, which he hoped to find by observing its dark silhouette as it passed between the Sun and Earth. Unfortunately, he failed to find the hoped-for planet, but his diligence paid off with an even more important discovery: the sunspot cycle. He found that the number of sunspots varied systematically, in cycles about a decade long. In this laboratory, you will engage in tracking the Sun like Galileo and Schwabe during a six-day cycle and then do a simple calculation of the rotational period of our sun.
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Distant Nature: Astronomy Exercises 2016 by Stephen Tuttle under license "Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike".
ASTR 1020 - Lab 4: Solar Rotation and Sunspots
Download the attached zip file and install the website on a server or in your LMS course section. To place HTML website content in Brightspace:
- Create an appropriate folder structure in Manage Files. This location is where files will be uploaded and unzipped. Each resource (website) should have a descriptively named independent folder.
- Navigate to the appropriate folder and Upload the zip file.
- Unzip the folder by clicking the pull-down arrow, and clicking Unzip on the submenu. A content folder will appear. It contains two folders and two HTML files.
- Associate the index.html file to your Course Content topic. Perform this task in the Course Content area by clicking New and then clicking Add from Manage Files on the submenu. Next, navigate to the index.html file and Add the file.
- Click the pull-down arrow by the new web page topic (currently named index). Next, click Edit Properties In-place on the submenu and rename the link to be descriptive.
- Delete the extraneous zip file from the Manage Files folder.