Historical beliefs · Documented tradition
Spots on the Sun, recorded without a telescope
Long before telescopes, astronomers at the Chinese imperial court wrote down dark spots seen on the Sun.
The record
- Who
- Astronomers of the Chinese imperial court
- Where
- China
- When
- from 28 BC; official histories to 1638
- Kind of evidence
- Official dynastic histories, as summarised by NASA's Yohkoh team and the NCAR High Altitude Observatory
- A living tradition?
- No
The records
A record from 28 BC describes the rising Sun as yellow, with a black gas at its centre, like a coin. NASA's Yohkoh team counted 112 descriptions of notable sunspots in the official Chinese histories between 28 BC and AD 1638.
Older still?
The High Altitude Observatory's timeline goes further back, noting that the two oldest records of a sunspot observation are found in the Book of Changes, compiled around or before 800 BC. The same timeline puts the oldest eclipse record on a clay tablet from Ugarit, in what is now Syria. Telescopes, and Galileo's argument that the spots were on the Sun itself, came only in the 1600s (NASA timeline).
Sources
- NASA Yohkoh archive (A. Davey, 2002) A Little Bit of (Naked Eye) Sun Spot History (opens in a new tab) for the 28 BC record ('a black gas … like a coin'); 112 notable sunspots in Chinese histories to 1638 · checked 2 October 2026
- NCAR High Altitude Observatory Solar Physics Historical Timeline, 1223 BC – 200 BC (opens in a new tab) for the Ugarit eclipse tablet; sunspot mentions in the Book of Changes · checked 2 October 2026
- NASA History Spots, Waves and Wind: A Solar Science Timeline (opens in a new tab) for Galileo 1613, Fraunhofer 1817, Schwabe 1843, Carrington 1859, Janssen 1868, Hale 1908, coronagraph 1931, Parker 1958, Maunder minimum · checked 2 October 2026