Solar Astrometry in Rome at the End of the Maunder Minimum

In 1702 with the inauguration in Rome of the great Clementine Gnomon in St. Maria degli Angeli, a 45 m pinhole-meridian line, built upon the will of pope Clemens XI, Francesco Bianchini started the Roman tradition of solar astrometry. Bianchini was inspired by the Heliometer of Giandomenico Cassini, a 67 m pinhole-meridian line realized in Bologna and in operation since 1655. In 1736 Eustachio Manfredi collected the measures of the solar meridian diameters made at the Heliometer since 1655, they encompassed the Maunder minimum of the Sun (1645-1715) and the first 20 years after. The result of a recent reanalysis of these data of Bologna, is that the average solar angular diameter at astronomical unit distance did not change between the Maunder minimum and the 20 years after, but this analysis did not include realistic errorbars, since Manfredi provided only the reduced data. Dedicated observations realized at the Clementine Gnomon in Rome between 2018 and 2025, in various meteorological conditions, contribute to this debate on the solar diameter evolution during and after the Maunder minimum. We compare the meridian diameters measured by Bianchini (raw and reduced) in the winter solstices of 1701-1702 with the ones measured by Sigismondi in 2018-2025 at the same Gnomon and in winter solstices. We provide the observational errorbars, not smaller than ±4” per single measure and systematic diminutions of the observed diameters of -10 mm with respect to the ephemerides, due to the light contrast of the solar image projected onto a white marble. After reducing the data of Rome Bianchini in 1701-1702 measured an angular diameter reduced at 1 AU of θ_Sun=1926”±12”, while us in 2018-2025, with similar observing conditions, obtained θ_Sun=1920”±18”. We can model the errorbars for the measures along the whole year, also for the Heliometer of Bologna, and we find that these data do not meaningfully constrain our current understanding of the Sun’s evolution during and after the Maunder minimum.