Three Scattered Sunspot Records in the Archive of the Royal Astronomical Observatory of the Spanish Navy (1789–1790)

The recovery of records of past solar observations is crucial to understand the evolution of solar activity. In this context, three records of sunspot observations made at the Royal Observatory of the Spanish Navy in 1789 January and July, and 1790 June are shown in the present work. The aim of the observers who performed these sunspot observations was the discovery of intramercurial planets crossing the solar disk. For that reason, the observers only recorded round and dark spots and they may not have recorded all the sunspots that they observed. However, these records provide us with previously unknown information such as dates of active days (days with sunspots on the Sun) and position of sunspots.