The astronomer Richard Carrington
Richard Carrington was born in Chelsea in 1826, the elder son of a wealthy family which owned a brewery in Brentford. He studied theology and mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge but it was a series of astronomy lectures that set the course of his life.
He was appointed Observer at the University of Durham, but he resigned the post in 1851. With money borrowed from his father, Carrington built a house on the top of Furzehill in Redhill, complete with its own observatory, and lived there from 1853 to 1861.
Standing in nearly three acres of grounds, the Dome or Redhill Observatory, was demolished in the 1960s. The Dome tower block now occupies the site, and the area still carries his legacy in its street names: Dome Way, Observatory Walk and Carrington Close.
Working from Redhill, Carrington projected the sun's image from his telescope onto a screen and sketched what he observed. His 1853 work, The Redhill Catalogue, recorded observations of almost 4,000 stars and earned him the Royal Astronomical Society's prestigious Gold Medal in 1859. But his most significant achievement was a book sponsored by the Royal Society, and published in 1867,covering his detailed observations of sunspots between 1853 and 1861.
His defining moment came on 1 September 1859, when he witnessed a pair of intensely bright crescent shapes flare up near a large sunspot group. He looked in vain for a witness and soon the vision faded. Fortunately, another amateur astronomer, Richard Hodgson, independently reported this unusual event.
Richard Carrington drawing of sunspots 1859.
What Carrington had seen was a solar flare, the first ever recorded, and one that was spectacularly big. It became known as the Carrington Event. Telegraph systems around the world failed, and some equipment even caught fire as the resulting solar storm struck Earth.
At the time, it was regarded as a curiosity but today it is understood as a warning. A far smaller flare in 1969 knocked out Quebec's entire power grid, while a 2006 storm disabled satellites and disrupted communications and power networks worldwide.
A storm on the scale of the Carrington Event would pose a severe threat to modern satellites, spacecraft and electrical infrastructure. Some scientists have argued it could threaten the stability of modern civilization. On 23 July 2012, a storm of comparable magnitude narrowly missed the Earth, though the news wasn't made public for another two years.
Carrington's father died in 1858, and he took over the family brewery, at first commuting before moving to Isleworth in 1861. By 1866 he had sold the business and suffered what appears to have been a breakdown, retreating to Middle Devil's Jump near Churt. In 1869 he married Rosa Helen Jeffries, a young woman of great beauty but no formal education. Carrington arranged for her to receive an intensive education before she joined him in 1871.
The years that followed were marked by turmoil. Rosa was relentlessly pursued by a former lover, William Rodway, a former dragoon who repeatedly demanded money and gifts - a situation Carrington seems to have been aware of. In August 1871, Rodway attacked Rosa with a knife in what may also have been an attempted suicide. Both survived, and Rodway was sentenced to twenty years in prison.
Rosa's mental health never recovered. She died in November 1875 after an overdose of sedative, and the coroner criticised Carrington for failing to ensure she received proper care. Devastated, Carrington dismissed his servants, visited his mother, and returned alone to his empty house in Middlesex. He was found dead two days later, having taken an overdose of chloral; a stroke was recorded as the official cause of death.
A History of Redhill, Volume One (1999), Alan Moore
The Redhill Story, (1994) Nigel Dunne
Solar flare image, showing material being ejected from a region on the Sun: This image was also used as part of a press release about the SOLIS project. 26 February 1998
Photograph of Richard Carrington: The photograph of Richard Carrington resurfaced in 2025, identified by Royal Astronomical Society assistant archivist Kate Bond among an album of portraits offered by a Pittsburgh dealer. It was probably one of the formal portraits commissioned for new Fellows.