Richard Christopher CarringtonArticle Free Pass Richard
Christopher Carrington, (born May 26, 1826, London, Eng.—died
Nov. 27, 1875, Churt, near Farnham, Surrey), English astronomer
who, by observing the motions of sunspots, discovered the
equatorial acceleration of the Sun—i.e., that it rotates faster
at the equator than near the poles. He also discovered the
movement of sunspot zones toward the Sun’s equator as the solar
cycle progresses. The son of a brewer, Carrington was educated
at Cambridge and in 1853 established his own observatory at
Redhill, Reigate, Surrey. He published A Catalogue of 3,735
Circumpolar Star (1857). In 1859 he noted the coincidence (but
did not claim a direct connection) between an intense
geomagnetic storm and a solar flare he had observed the day
before, thus prefiguring the discipline of space weather
research. In 1865 his health failed and he did little work
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