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Meanwhile Kennedy's long fingers were busy at the preliminary operations in his tests. He turned away and I asked no more questions, not wishing to delay him. I noticed that first he examined the blood samples under the microscope. Afterward he employed a spectroscope. But none of the operations took any great amount of time, since he seemed to anticipate his results.
The spectroscope showed that it was decidedly auroral, but as the aurora was seen on the dark disc of the moon it must have been due to the earth's atmosphere. Part of the corona was polarized, and consequently must have been material; the question is, Can it be the ethereal medium?
The telescope has banished Phoebus and Diana from our literature, and the spectroscope has vulgarised the stars. Will science make an end of poetry as Renan and many others have thought? Surely not? Poetry is quite as natural and as needful to mankind as science. All men are poetical, as they are scientific, more or less.
It had to match, of course, unless there'd been extraordinarily bad astrogation. Willis put the spectroscope away, estimated for himself, and then checked with the dial that indicated the brightness of the still point-sized star. He said: "Four light-weeks, I make it." Sergeant Madden nodded.
In the nineteenth century we have the exploration of Africa and the acquisition of territory in its interior, in which the various nations of Europe vie with each other again as three centuries before; the discovery of steam, and its ever-growing application to the transportation of goods and passengers on sea and land; of the spectroscope, and through it of many new elements, including helium in the sun, and, later, on the earth; of argon in the earth's atmosphere; of anæsthetics and of the antiseptic methods in surgery, and, lastly, the enormous recent strides in electrical science.
Fifty years ago much of our solar machinery was misunderstood and many things were enveloped in mystery which since has been made very plain. The spectroscope has had a wonderful part in astronomical research. It first revealed the nature of the gases existing in the sun. It next enabled us to study the prominences on any clear day.
Such is the suggestion of the modern astronomer, and, although we seem to find every phase of the theory embodied in the varied contents of the heavens, we must not forget that it is only a suggestion. The spectroscope and telescopic photography, which are far more important than the visual telescope, are comparatively recent, and the field to be explored is enormous.
They emerged from a series of observations begun at South Kensington under Sir Norman Lockyer's direction in 1879, and continued for fifteen years. The principle of the method employed is this. The whole range of Fraunhofer lines is visible when the light from a spot is examined with the spectroscope; but relatively few are widened.
They relate to the sensitiveness of these tentacles, as he prefers to call them, and the mode in which it is manifested; their power of absorption; their astonishing discernment of the presence of animal or other soluble azotized matter, even in quantities so minute as to rival the spectroscope that most exquisite instrument of modern research in delicacy; and, finally, they establish the fact of a true digestion, in all essential respects similar to that of the stomach of animals.
But the spectroscope shows that the star is double and that its components are in rapid revolution around one another, completing their orbital swing in the astonishingly short period of four days! The combined mass of the two stars is estimated to be two and a half times the mass of the sun, and the distance between them, from center to center, is about eight million miles.
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