The QuEST

Galileo Galilei
Sunspots were discovered in the seventeenth century. Galileo was obsessed with these enigmatic structures. Thanks to his observations, he discovered the rotation of the Sun.

See “Episode I. The QuEST for Sunspots”.

George Ellery Hale
Hale was born in 1868, in Chicago. He built several telescopes in the United States, but his great success was the discovery of intense magnetic fields in sunspots using  large spectrographs.

See “Episode I. The QuEST for Sunspots”

Angelo Secchi
Father Secchi was passionate about astronomy and a pioneer in applying spectroscopy to study the Sun. Thanks to that, Secchi could see some kind of “hairs” at the border of the Sun… SPICULES!

See “Episode II. The QuEST for Spicules”

John and Mary Evershed
John Evershed and his wife Mary spent most of their scientific careers at the Kodakainal Observatory, in India. They were very active studying the Sun and discovered the existence of strong gas motions in the penumbra of sunspots.

See Episode III (COMING SOON)

Richard Carrington:
On the first of September 1859, Richard Carrington observed something unusual from his observatory. Two very intense beams of white light appeared next to the sunspot he was drawing: a superflare!

See Episode IV (COMING SOON)

EPISODE I: THE QUEST FOR SUNSPOTS

The first episode features Galileo Galilei and George E. Hale, two influential solar physicists who studied sunspots with the instruments they built.

Subtitles available:

Czech, Chinese, English, German, Hungarian, Norwegian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Polish, Portuguese

EPISODE II: THE QUEST FOR SPICULES

This episode tells the story of Father Secchi, his passion for astronomy, and the discovery of solar spicules.

 Subtitles available:

Czech, Chinese, English, German, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Portuguese