United States or Wallis and Futuna ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Now the point of the recent observations is that the fluctuations in the sun's heat, due to the periodic increase and subsidence of sun-spot disturbances such fluctuations having been long recognized as having regular cyclic intervals of about eleven years are instrumental in effecting changes in the terrestrial weather.
All modern total solar eclipse observations seem to show that the shape of the luminous corona surrounding the moon at the moment of totality has a special distinct character during the time of a sun-spot maximum, and another, totally different, during a sun-spot minimum. A suspicion is entertained that the total quantity of heat received by the earth from the sun is subject to the same period.
"I can satisfy you of it by pointing the telescope at a sun-spot," said Gazen, bringing the instrument to bear upon the sun. "You will then see how fast we are running to perdition. I say what would our friends in London think if they could see us now? Wouldn't old Possil snigger! Well, I shall get the better of him at last.
It perhaps affords a clue to much that is perplexing in stellar behaviour. Wolf pointed out in 1852 the striking resemblance in character between curves representing sun-spot frequency and curves representing the changing luminous intensity of many variable stars.
Sabine was the first to note the coincidence between this unlooked-for result and Schwabe's sun-spot period. He showed that, so far as observation had yet gone, the two cycles of change agreed perfectly both in duration and phase, maximum corresponding to maximum, minimum to minimum.
Each seems to act on its own account; it comports itself as if it were the sole representative of the substance emitting it; its appearance is unconditioned by that of any of its terrestrial companions in the same spectrum. The most curious fact, however, elicited by these inquiries was that of the attendance of chemical vicissitudes upon the advance of the sun-spot period.
Therefore we should find, throughout the entire atmosphere of such stars, some of the same compounds that are produced within the comparatively small limits of a sun-spot. This, of course, on the correct assumption that sun and stars are made of the same substances. Fowler has already identified the bands of titanium oxide in such red stars as the giant Betelgeuse, and in others of its class.
The sequence of phenomena seen during the growth of a sun-spot, or the observation of spots of different sizes, and the long series of successive steps that mark the rise and decay of stellar life, resemble the changes that the experimenter brings about as he increases and diminishes the current in the coils of his magnet or raises and lowers the temperature of his electric furnace, examining from time to time the spectrum of the glowing vapors, and noting the changes shown by the varying appearance of their lines.
Apparently it belonged to the structure of the cottage, but he could not, in the imperfect light, and the dazzling of the sun-spot at which he had been staring, make out what it was, or how it came to be up there unsupported as far as he could see. He rose to examine it, lifted a bit of tarpaulin which hung before it, and found a rickety box, suspended by a rope from a great nail in the wall.
A spinning solar tornado, incomparably greater in scale than the devastating whirlwinds that so often cut narrow paths of destruction through town and country in the Middle West, gradually gives rise to a sun-spot. The expansion produced by the centrifugal force at the centre of the storm cools the intensely hot gases of the solar atmosphere to a point where chemical union can occur.
Word Of The Day