Maunders

This week marks the birthdays of an astronomy power couple: E. Walter Maunder, born in London on April 12, 1851, and Annie Russell Maunder, born in Strabane, Ireland on April 14, 1868. Walter joined the Greenwich Royal Observatory in 1873 as photographic and spectroscopic assistant, a job which included photographing the Sun and recording positions of sunspots. In 1891 Annie joined the solar department of the observatory as a human computer. The two began collaborating on research, and they married in 1895. By getting married Annie had to quit her job, but that didn’t stop her from doing science. Annie designed a camera to photograph solar eclipses and obtained brilliant images on eclipse expeditions. In 1904, the Maunders published the famous “butterfly diagram,” which plots the positions and frequency of sunspots throughout the 11-year solar cycle. They also confirmed evidence that sunspot activity plummeted between about 1645 and 1715, years that were unusually cold on Earth. That period is now called the Maunder minimum. Annie later served as editor of the British Astronomical Association and was one of the first women admitted to the Royal Astronomical Society.

Date in History: 12 April 1851