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Astronomers were well-prepared this time for the scientific study of the new star, both astronomical photography and spectroscopy having been perfected, and the results of their investigations were calculated to increase the wonder with which the phenomenon was regarded.
Precisely what this implies and involves we do not know; but the symptoms of its occurrence are probably altogether different from those gathered by Sir Norman Lockyer from the collation of celestial spectra. A. J. Ångström of Upsala takes rank after Kirchhoff as a subordinate founder, so to speak, of solar spectroscopy.
Spectroscopy, which then took its rise, is probably that employment of physical knowledge, already won, as a means of further acquisition, which most impresses the imagination.
For this reason work of precision must remain the province of refracting telescopes, although great reflectors retain the primacy in the portraiture of the heavenly bodies, as well as in certain branches of spectroscopy.
On September 19th, 1868, eclipse spectroscopy began with the Indian eclipse, in which all observers found that the red prominences showed a bright line spectrum, indicating the presence of hydrogen and other gases. So bright was it that Jansen exclaimed: "Je verrai ces lignes-la en dehors des eclipses." And the next day he observed the lines at the edge of the uneclipsed sun.
Is the day dawning, when the phenomena of hypnotism will be analyzed and formulated as accurately as the symbols of chemistry, or the constituents of protoplasm, or the weird chromatics of spectroscopy?
They could not, accordingly, be turned to account in stellar spectroscopy until the Lick telescope was at hand to supply more abundant material for research. By the use thus made possible of Rowland's gratings, Professor Keeler was able to apply enormous dispersion to the rays of stars and nebulæ, and so to attain a previously unheard-of degree of accuracy in their measurement.
"I had expected to find a poison, perhaps an alkaloid," he continued slowly, as he outlined his discoveries by the use of one of the most fascinating branches of modern science, spectroscopy. "In cases of poisoning by these substances, the spectroscope often has obvious advantages over chemical methods, for minute amounts will produce a well-defined spectrum.
And I bring to my support the more liberal lexicography of science, whose spectroscopy now admits the humblest elements into the society of the stars; whose microscopy, as Maeterlinck has helped us to become aware, has permitted the flowers to share the aspirations of animal intelligence; whose chemistry has gathered the elements into a social democracy in which no permanent aristocracy seems now to be possible, except that of service to man; whose physics has divided the atom and yet exalted it to a place which would lead Lucretius, were he writing now, to include it in Natura Deorum instead of Natura Rerum.
This statement, as Sir E. Sabine remarked when awarding him the Rumford medal of the Royal Society in 1872, contains a fundamental principle of spectrum analysis, and though for a number of years it was overlooked it entitles him to rank as one of the founders of spectroscopy. From 1861 onwards he paid special attention to the solar spectrum.
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