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| Hisako Koyama +40Years Observation of Sunspots |
Via the website of the University of Colorado Boulder I found an article on "Hidden Figure" Hisako Koyama. She is a Japanese Solar Observer and observing +40 years of sunspot and making +10000 drawings.
To better understand the solar cycle, an international group of scientists reconstructed the number of sunspots seen each year since scientists first observed them by telescope in 1610. A researchers team searched through original sunspot observations for the past 400 years and discovered Koyama’s work in Japan. They combined her collection of drawings with those of Galileo Galilei, Pierre Gassendi, Johann Caspar Staudacher, Heinrich Schwabe and Rudolf Wolf to establish a continuous sunspot count for the past four centuries.
Those five names are the giants of sunspot records. Koyama’s more than 40 years of drawings proved invaluable to the scientists because few solar observations have been collected by the same person, using the same telescope and using the same observation method for such a long time.
Her drawings are digitized and available via the Japanese National Museum of Nature and Science.
Interesting to note is that she is one of few people who ever witnessed a white-light flare with the naked eye. She recorded this on November 15, 1960.
If you want to search into the archieves for digitized sunspot drawings, use this link.
