Records of sunspot and aurora during CE 960–1279 in the Chinese chronicle of the Sòng dynasty

Abstract

Records of sunspot and aurora observations in pre-telescopic historical documents can provide useful information about solar activity in the past. This is also true for extreme space weather events, as they may have been recorded as large sunspots observed by the naked eye or as low-latitude auroras. In this paper, we present the results of a comprehensive survey of records of sunspots and auroras in the Sòngshǐ, a Chinese formal chronicle spanning the tenth to the thirteenth century. This chronicle contains a record of continuous observations with well-formatted reports conducted as a policy of the government. A brief comparison of the frequency of observations of sunspots and auroras and the observations of radioisotopes as an indicator of the solar activity during corresponding periods is provided. This paper is the first step of our project in which we survey and compile the records of sunspots and auroras in historical documents from various locations and languages, ultimately providing it to the science community as online data.

Records of sunspot and aurora activity during 581–959 CE in Chinese official histories concerning the periods of Suí, Táng, and the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms

“…1 The term of "wŭxíng (五行)" is translated on one hand to "Five Elements" by Bielenstein (1950;1984), Hayakawa et al (2015), and Kawamura et al (2016), and on the other hand translated to "Five Phases" by Pankenier (2013). In our study, we use translation of "Five Elements" to keep consistency with our previous papers (Hayakawa et al 2015;Kawamura et al 2016 The astronomical records in question in these official histories are compiled into and are available in the imperial chronicles (本紀), the Treatises of Astronomy (天文志), and the Treatises of the Five Elements (五行志).…”

“…In our study, we use translation of "Five Elements" to keep consistency with our previous papers (Hayakawa et al 2015;Kawamura et al 2016 The astronomical records in question in these official histories are compiled into and are available in the imperial chronicles (本紀), the Treatises of Astronomy (天文志), and the Treatises of the Five Elements (五行志). Keimatsu (1970Keimatsu ( -1976 claimed that records in the Chinese official histories can be regarded more objectively than those in many other historical sources, because trained experts made regular observations at specified locations and recorded the celestial phenomena alongside dates and often with detailed notes on motions, shapes, and colors.…”

“…Many authors have published lists of astronomical events, including naked-eye sunspots and low-latitude auroras, retrieved from historical documents from Japan (Kanda 1933;Matsushita 1956;Nakazawa et al 2004;Shiokawa et al 2005), Korea (Lee et al 2004), Babylon (Stephenson et al 2004;Hayakawa et al 2016d), the West Asia (Basurah 2006;Hayakawa et al 2016c), Western Europe (Fritz 1873;Link 1962;Dell'Dall'Olmo 1979;Stothers 1979;Vaquero & Trigo 2005;Vaquero et al 2010), Russia (Vyssotsky 1949), North America (Broughton 2002), the Tropical Atlantic Ocean (Vázquez & Vaquero 2010), and China (Schove and Ho 1959;Keimatsu 1970Keimatsu -1976Yau & Stephenson 1988;Saito & Ozawa 1992;Yau et al 1995;Xu et al 2000;Hayakawa et al 2015;Kawamura et al 2016;Hayakawa et al 2016e, submitted). A review of the historical records of solar activity was given in the monograph by Vaquero & Vázquez (2009).…”

“…The bibliographic information and the original text of corresponding passages are provided for the examination of reliability. Our previous paper (Hayakawa et al 2015, hereafter referred to as H15) was our first step of this project, providing the results of the survey of the candidates of sunspot and aurora observations in Sòngshǐ, a Chinese official history covering the period during 10th-13th century (the Sòng dynasty era). We have extended our survey to 13th -20th century (Hayakawa et al 2016e, submitted;Kawamura et al 2016).…”

Sheath-accumulating Propagation of Interplanetary Coronal Mass Ejection

“…The possible impacts of superflares on space weather and terrestrial environment have been vigorously discussed (Miyake et al 2012;Schrijver et al 2012;Shibata et al 2013;Tsurutani & Lakhina 2014;Hayakawa et al 2015;Airapetian et al 2016;Takahashi et al 2016).…”