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The Footnote June 26, 2026 · Royal Greenwich Observatory

The Greenwich Astronomer Who Named the 17th-Century Solar Minimum and Married His Best Collaborator

Edward Walter Maunder was Royal Greenwich Observatory's senior solar astronomer from 1873 to 1913. He identified the unusual 1645–1715 sunspot deficit in the Greenwich archive and substantially defined it as a coherent solar-activity phenomenon. He married his junior collaborator Annie Russell in 1895 — and her contribution to the work was substantially larger than the published record acknowledged.

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The Footnote June 24, 2026 · Royal Greenwich Observatory

The Solar Photographer Who Discovered That Sunspots Move Toward the Equator Through Each Cycle

Annie Scott Dill Russell Maunder was a Cambridge-trained mathematician who spent thirty years at the Royal Greenwich Observatory photographing the Sun. She discovered the substantive equator-ward drift of sunspots through the solar cycle and co-authored the historical work that gave her husband Edward Maunder credit for what should have been a joint discovery.

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