Richard Christopher Carrington
[4] He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1844; but, though destined for the church, rather by his father's than by his own desire, his scientific tendencies gradually prevailed, and received a final impulse towards practical astronomy from Professor Challis's lectures on the subject.
This change in the purpose of his life was unopposed, and he had the prospect of ample means; so that it was purely with the object of gaining experience that he applied, shortly after taking his degree as thirty-sixth wrangler in 1848,[4] for the post of observer in the University of Durham.
Desirous of advancing so far beyond his predecessors as to include in his survey stars of the tenth magnitude, he vainly applied for a suitable instrument, and at last, hopeless of accomplishing any part of his design at Durham, or of benefiting by any further stay, he resigned his position there in March 1852.
In July 1853 a transit-circle of 5½ feet focus, reduced in scale from the Greenwich model, and an equatorial of 4½ inches aperture, both by Simms, were in their places, and work was begun.
On 9 December 1853, Carrington presented to the RAS, as the result of a preliminary survey, printed copies of nine draft maps, containing all stars down to the eleventh magnitude within 9° of the Pole (Monthly Notices, xiv.
'[2] The work was printed at public expense, the decision to that effect by the Lords of the Admiralty rendering unnecessary the acceptance of Leverrier's handsome offer to include it in the next forthcoming volume of the 'Annales' of the Paris observatory.
It was rewarded with the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, in presenting which, 11 February 1859, Mr. Main dwelt upon the eminent utility of the design, as well as the 'standard excellence' of its execution (ib.
While his new observatory was in course of construction, he devoted some of his spare time to examining the drawings and records of sunspots in possession of the RAS, and was much struck with the need and scarcity of systematic solar observations.
Sabine's and Wolf's discovery of the coincidence between the magnetic and sunspot periods had just then been announced, and he believed he should be able to take advantage of the pre-occupation or inability of other observers to appropriate to himself, by 'close and methodical research,' the next ensuing eleven-year cycle.
He limited his task to fixing the true period of the Sun's rotation (of which curiously discrepant values had been obtained), to tracing the laws of distribution of maculæ, and investigating the existence of permanent surface-currents.
Then, as the inverted image traversed the screen, the instants of contact with the wires of the Sun's limbs and of the spot-nucleus to be measured were severally noted, when an easy calculation gave its heliocentric position (ib.
He continued for some time to supervise the solar work he had previously carried on in person; but in March 1861, seeing no prospect of release from commercial engagements, he thought it advisable to close the series.
It formed, however, the basis of Faye's theory (1865) of the Sun as a gaseous body ploughed through by vertical currents, which finally superseded Herschel's idea of a flame-enveloped, but cool, dark, and even habitable globe.
As the minimum approached, the belts of disturbance gradually contracted towards and died out near the equator; shortly after which two fresh series broke out, as if by a completely new impulse, in comparatively high latitudes, and spread equatorially.
It is, nevertheless, intimately related to the course of sunspot development, since Wolf found evidence of a similar behaviour in Böhm's observations of 1833–6, and it was perceived by Spörer and Secchi to recur in 1867.
While still in his apprenticeship at Durham, Carrington repaired to Sweden on the occasion of the total solar eclipse of 28 July 1851, and made at Lilla Edet, on the Göta river, observations printed in the Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society (xxi.
The experience thus gained was turned to public account in the compilation of Information and Suggestions addressed to Persons who may be able to place themselves within the Shadow of the Total Eclipse of the Sun on September 7, 1858, a brochure printed and circulated by the lords of the admiralty in May 1858.
In 1869, he married Rosa Ellen Jeffries (1845–75), and, having disposed of the brewery, he retired to Churt, Surrey, where, on the top of an isolated conical hill, 60 feet high, locally known as the Middle Devil's Jump, in a lonely and picturesque spot, he built a new observatory (ib.
The event, combined perhaps with the censure on a supposed deficiency of proper nursing precautions conveyed by the verdict of the coroner's jury, tolled heavily on her husband's spirits.
After a time some neighbour gave the alarm, the doors were broken open, and his dead body was found extended on a mattress locked into a remote apartment.
A poultice of tea-leaves was tied over the left ear, as if for the relief of pain, and a post-mortem examination showed death to have resulted from an effusion of blood on the brain.
Carrington's manuscript books of sunspot observations and reductions, with a folio volume of drawings, were purchased after his death by Lord Lindsay (later Earl of Crawford), and presented to the Royal Astronomical Society (ib.
[4] Among his numerous contributions to scientific collections may be mentioned a paper 'On the Distribution of the Perihelia of the Parabolic and Hyperbolic Comets in relation to the Motion of the Solar System in Space,' read before the Astronomical Society, 14 December 1860 (Mem.
The result, like that of Mohn's contemporaneous investigation, proved negative, and was thought to be, through uncontrolled conditions, nugatory; yet it perhaps conveyed an important truth as to the original connection of comets with the solar system.
