United States or Monaco ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Huggins and Miller eagerly studied the star with the spectroscope, and their results were received with deepest interest. They concluded that the light of the new star had two different sources, each giving a spectrum peculiar to itself. One of the spectra had dark lines and the other bright lines. It will be remembered that a similar peculiarity was exhibited by the new star in Auriga in 1893.
When the white light from the electric lamp is sent through that flame, you will have ocular proof that the yellow flame intercepts the yellow of the spectrum; in other words, that it absorbs waves of the same period as its own, thus producing, to all intents and purposes, a dark Fraunhofer's band in the place of the yellow.
It is true that an examination of the sun's spectrum has not, as yet, revealed any radium lines, but it is well known that helium, a transformation product of radium, is present in it. And this modification of our views as to the probable age of our solar system was far from being the only result of this latest discovery.
This is not to say that we can see some coloured green, but that green appears in the spectrum of some of the nebulæ, while the spectrum of a white nebula is more like that of a star. It is fortunate for us that in the sky we can see without a telescope one instance of each of the several objects of interest that we have referred to.
And this is again transformed into a yellow one on closing the eyes, and so reciprocally, as quick as the motions of the opening and closing eyelids. Hence, when Mr. Melvill observed the scintillations of the star Sirius to be sometimes coloured, these were probably the direct spectrum of the blue sky on the parts of the retina fatigued by the white light of the star.
An electric beam, transmitted from the Eiffel Tower to Meudon in the summer of 1888, having passed through a weight of oxygen about equal to that piled above the surface of the earth, showed the groups A and B just as they appear in the high-sun spectrum. Atmospheric action is then adequate to produce them.
Moreover, with ordinary optical means it is possible to produce only one type of spectrum at a time, so that each is left in need of being complemented by the other.
The time had now evidently come for a fundamental revision of current notions respecting the nature of the sun. Herschel's theory of a cool, dark, habitable globe, surrounded by, and protected against, the radiations of a luminous and heat-giving envelope, was shattered by the first dicta of spectrum analysis.
But though they spent much time taking photographs of the planets and of the moon, and in making spectrum analyses of the sun, time passed very slowly. Day after day they saw measured on the clocks, but they stayed awake, finding they needed little sleep, for they wasted no physical energy. Their weightlessness eliminated fatigue.
Tertiary colors are many more than both primary and secondary. They are hues not found in the spectrum. They are nature's stepchildren rather than children, and many of them might not inappropriately be called children of art; yet although most of them are of inventions that man has sought out, they are at best but shades, and must all look back to the spectrum as their common parent.
Word Of The Day