E. Ribes et al have just presented some data on solar diameter actually taken during the Maunder Minimum. By analysing a unique 53-year record of regular observations of the solar diameter and sunspot positions during the seventeenth century, we have shown for the first time that the angular diameter was larger and rotation slower during the Maunder Minimum. A larger sun might be cooler, providing less heat, thus accounting for climate changes. Just why the sun expands and contracts over a period measured in hundreds of years is a major astro physical conundrum. Variation in solar diameter, 1860-1940.
Arrows indicate sunspot maxima.
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