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Science 4 April 1980:
Vol. 208. no. 4439, pp. 51 - 53
DOI: 10.1126/science.208.4439.51
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Articles

Is the Sun Shrinking?

IRWIN I. SHAPIRO 1

1 Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge 02139

Observations of 23 transits of Mercury in front of the sun between 1736 and 1973 show no indication of any significant change in the diameter of the sun. Regression analysis yields a decrease of the angular diameter, as viewed from the earth, of under 0.3 arc second per century (> 90 percent confidence limit). This limit is incompatible with the 2 arc seconds per century decrease obtained by Eddy for the equatorial diameter from direct observations made at the Greenwich Observatory and at the U.S. Naval Observatory.

Submitted on November 16, 1979


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Measurement of Solar Radius Changes.
B. J. LABONTE and R. HOWARD (1981)
Science 214, 907-909
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Total Eclipses of the Sun.
J. B. Zirker (1980)
Science 210, 1313-1319
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Observations of a Probable Change in the Solar Radius Between 1715 and 1979.
D. W. DUNHAM, S. SOFIA, A. D. FIALA, D. HERALD, and P. M. MULLER (1980)
Science 210, 1243-1245
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