Richard Christopher Carrington
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Richard Christopher Carrington (May 26, 1826 – November 27, 1875) was an English amateur astronomer who discovered the differential rotation of the sun by means of sunspot observations in 1863. In 1859 he and Richard Hodgson, another English amateur, independently made the first observations of a solar flare. Because of a simultaneous "crochet" observed in the Kew Gardens magnetometer record and a geomagnetic storm observed the following day, he suspected a solar-terrestrial connection. Even though Carrington did not discover the 11-year sunspot activity cycle, his observations of the sunspot activity after he heard about Heinrich Schwabe observations led to the numbering of the cycles being done with his name. Thus the sunspot maximum of 2002 was of the Carrington Cycle #23. Carrington also determined the elements of the rotation axis of the Sun, based on sunspot motions, and his results remained in use in the 21st century.
Carrington made the initial observations leading to the establishment of Spörer's law.
He won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1859.
