Records of sunspot and aurora activity during 581–959 CE in Chinese official histories concerning the periods of <i>Suí</i>, <i>Táng</i>, and the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms

Kawamura, Akito Davis; Hayakawa, Hisashi; Tsukamoto, Asuka; Isobe, Hiroaki; Ebihara, Yusuke

doi:10.1093/pasj/psw132

Cited by 20 publications

(51 citation statements)

References 74 publications

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“…East Asian countries tried hard to import and imitate Chinese systems and cultures such as how to rule their country, build their capital city, write, and record their official history (正史). The Japanese official histories were written in Chinese and their formats were imported from those of the Chinese imperial chronicles (本紀) in the official histories (正史) (Sakamoto 1970;Tamazawa et al 2017).…”

Section: Montoku Tennou Jitsuroku (Nmtj 日本文徳天皇実録)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Based on its description, we can easily find similarities with sunspot records in the Chinese official histories. Its size was compared to a plum fruit, as seen in the Chinese and Korean official histories (e.g., Lee et al 2004;Hayakawa et al 2015;Tamazawa et al 2017), although it is recorded in a different character (in Japanese 黒點; in Chinese 黒子). Considering that this sunspot was reported to be observed when "the sun was not bright," we may estimate the presence of Asian dust (黄砂/黃沙) to allow astronomers to observe this sunspot.…”

Section: Sunspot Recordsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We have three red clouds (赤雲), one red light (赤光), one bluish cloud (青雲) and five white clouds (白雲). These terminologies are used in the official histories of the Táng dynasty (Tamazawa et al 2017) and for simultaneous auroral observations caused by great magnetic storms such as those in 1363 or the Carrington event in 1859 Hayakawa et al 2016aHayakawa et al , 2016b.…”

Section: Auroral Candidates and Their Descriptionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The white aurorae may be explained as follows. In such a case that the auroral lights are too faint to be detected by the cone cells of the human eye responsible for color vision, the rod cells of the human eye used in peripheral vision dominate because of the so-called Purkinje effect (Purkinje 1825) and, hence, green aurorae can be observed as being whitish (Tamazawa et al 2017). It is also possible that some of the strong green aurorae are described as bluish because of the color recognition in ancient East Asia (e.g., Pankenier 2013), although it is also possible to explain the bluish aurorae by the excited nitrogen or hydrogen (Tinsley et al 1984).…”

Section: Auroral Candidates and Their Descriptionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Three of them are found around the new moon and are hence considered to receive little influence from the moonlight: A1 and A13 fall into the lunar phase < 0.1 while A3 falls into the lunar phase > 0.9. However, we must note that bright aurorae can be observed even with the presence of the full moon and, hence, we cannot simply exclude the auroral candidates that appear around the full moon (see Loomis 1860;Bernard 1910;Tamazawa et al 2017). …”

Section: Aurora and Moon Phasementioning

confidence: 99%

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Records of auroral candidates and sunspots in Rikkokushi, chronicles of ancient Japan from early 7th century to 887

Hayakawa

Iwahashi

Ebihara

et al. 2017

Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan

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In this article, we present the results of the surveys on sunspots and auroral candidates in Rikkokushi, Japanese Official Histories from the early 7 th century to 887 to review the solar and auroral activities. In total, we found one sunspot record and 13 auroral candidates in Rikkokushi. We then examine the records of the sunspots and auroral candidates, compare the auroral candidates with the lunar phase to estimate the reliability of the auroral candidates, and compare the records of the sunspots and auroral candidates with the contemporary total solar irradiance reconstructed from radioisotope data. We also identify the locations of the observational sites to review possible equatorward expansion of auroral oval. These discussions suggest a major gap of auroral candidates from the late 7 th to early 9 th century, which includes the minimum number of candidates reconstructed from the radioisotope data, a similar tendency as the distributions of sunspot records in contemporary China, and a relatively high magnetic latitude with a higher potential for observing aurorae more frequently than at present. IntroductionInformation of long-term solar activity is important in the viewpoint of not only solar physics but also the relationship between solar activity and the terrestrial climate. Modern scientific data of solar activity are based on sunspot observations since the early 17 th century (Hoyt & Schatten 1998;Owens 2013; Clette et al. 2014;Savalgaard & Schatten 2016). On the contrary, in order to study the solar activity during the pre-telescopic age, there are two types of proxies: the ratio of radioactive isotopes and the records of sunspots and aurorae in historical documents (Eddy 1980;Vaquero & Vázquez 2009). Radioactive isotopes such as Carbon-14 and Beryllium-10 are used to reconstruct the group sunspot number or total solar irradiance (TSI) during the pre-telescopic age (e.g., Solanki et al. 2004;Steinhilber et al. 2009). Conversely, historical records of sunspots and aurorae can be used as another proxy for solar activity during the pre-telescopic era (e.g., Vaquero & Vázquez 2009;Riley et al. 2015).The largest solar event in the history of ground-based telescopic observations is thought to be the so-called Carrington event in 1859 (Carrington 1859). An unusually large magnetic change was recorded at low latitudes, which reached about −1600 nT. The disturbance storm index (Dst) was estimated to be −1760 nT (Tsurutani et al. 2003) and −625 nT (Siscoe et al 2006). Carrington (1859; 1863) reported a large sunspot coupled with a white flare in his study on 01 September 1859. This flare caused worldwide auroral observations even in low-latitude areas such as Hawaii, the 2 Caribbean coasts, and Japan on the following day,

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Section: Montoku Tennou Jitsuroku (Nmtj 日本文徳天皇実録)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Sunspot Recordsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Auroral Candidates and Their Descriptionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Auroral Candidates and Their Descriptionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Aurora and Moon Phasementioning

confidence: 99%

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Records of auroral candidates and sunspots in Rikkokushi, chronicles of ancient Japan from early 7th century to 887

Hayakawa

Iwahashi

Ebihara

et al. 2017

Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan

Self Cite

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Historical space weather monitoring of prolonged aurora activities in Japan and in China

et al. 2017

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Great magnetic storms are recorded as aurora sightings in historical documents. The earliest known example of “prolonged” aurora sightings, with aurora persistent for two or more nights within a 7 day interval at low latitudes, in Japan was documented on 21–23 February 1204 in Meigetsuki, when a big sunspot was also recorded in China. We have searched for prolonged events over the 600 year interval since 620 in Japan based on the catalogue of Kanda [] and over the 700 year interval since 581 in China based on the catalogues of Tamazawa et al. (2017) and Hayakawa et al. (2015). Before the Meigetsuki event, a significant fraction of the 200 possible aurora sightings in Sòng dynasty (960–1279) of China was detected at least twice within a 7 day interval and sometimes recurred with approximately the solar rotation period of 27 days. The majority of prolonged aurora activity events occurred around the maximum phase of solar cycles rather than around the minimum, as estimated from the 14C analysis of tree rings. They were not reported during the Oort Minimum (1010–1050). We hypothesize that the prolonged aurora sightings are associated with great magnetic storms resulting from multiple coronal mass ejections from the same active region. The historical documents therefore provide useful information to support estimation of great magnetic storm frequency, which are often associated with power outages and other societal concerns.

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New sunspots and aurorae in the historical Chinese text corpus? Comments on uncritical digital search applications

Neuhäuser¹,

Neuhäuser

Chapman

2018

Astron Nachr

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. However, we show strong shortcomings in the digital search technique as applied by them: almost all likely true sunspot and aurora records were presented earlier (e.g., Xu et al. 2000), which are not mentioned in those papers; the remaining records are dubious and often refer to other phenomena, neither spots nor aurorae (this also applies to Hayakawa et al. 2017c). The alleged aurorae in Hayakawa et al. (2015) and Kawamura et al. (2016) show a broad peak around full moon, not expected for aurorae. Hayakawa et al. (2017a) use the Korean report At night, the gate of heaven was opened (between AD 992 Dec 6 and AD 993 Jan 25, i.e., close to the 14 C variation AD 993/994) to estimate the Dst index of solar activity, even though the text does not fulfill any discriminative aurora criteria (except night-time). Most of the above publications include very few Chinese texts and translations, and their tables with abbreviated keywords do not allow the reader to consider alternative interpretations (the tables also do not specify which records mention night-time). We have compared some of their event tables with previously published catalogues and found various discrepancies. There are also intrinsic inconsistencies, misleading information (lunar phase for day-time events), and dating errors. We present Chinese texts and translations for some of their presumable new aurorae: only one can be considered a likely true aurora (AD 604 Jan); some others were selected on the sole basis of the use of the word light or rainbow. Several alleged new aurorae present observations beside the Sun during day-time. There are well-known comets among their presumable aurorae. We also discuss (a) whether heiqi ri pang can stand for black spot(s) on one side of or beside the sun, (b) the aurora color confusion in Hayakawa et al. (2015Hayakawa et al. ( , 2016, and (c) whether white and unusual rainbows can be aurorae.

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Records of sunspot and aurora activity during 581–959 CE in Chinese official histories concerning the periods of Suí, Táng, and the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms

Cited by 20 publications

References 74 publications

Records of auroral candidates and sunspots in Rikkokushi, chronicles of ancient Japan from early 7th century to 887

Records of auroral candidates and sunspots in Rikkokushi, chronicles of ancient Japan from early 7th century to 887

Historical space weather monitoring of prolonged aurora activities in Japan and in China

New sunspots and aurorae in the historical Chinese text corpus? Comments on uncritical digital search applications

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