inducements to the construction of exact and comprehensive catalogues has been to elicit, by comparisons of those for widely separated epochs, the proper motions of the stars enumerated in them. Little was known on the subject at the beginning of the 19th century. William Herschel founded his determination in 1783 of the sun’s route in space upon the movements of thirteen stars; and he took into account those of only six in his second solution of the problem in 1805. But in 1837 Argelander employed 390 proper motions as materials for the treatment of the same subject; and L. Struve had at his disposal, in 1887, no less than 2800. From the re-observation of Lalande’s stars, after the lapse of not far from a century, J. Bossert was enabled to deduce 2675 proper motions, published at Paris in four successive memoirs, 1887–1902; and the sum-total of those ascertained probably now exceeds 6000. Yet this number, although it represents a portentous expenditure of labour, is insignificant compared with the multitude of the stellar throng; nor had any general tendency been discerned to regulate what seemed casual flittings until Professor Kapteyn, in 1904, adverted to the prevalence among all the brighter stars of opposite stream-flows towards two “vertices” situated in the Milky Way (see Star). The assured general fact as regards the direction of stellar movements was that they included a common parallactic element due to the sun’s translation. And it is by the consideration of this partial accordance in motion that the advance through space of the solar system has been ascertained.
The apex of the sun’s way was fixed by Professor Newcomb in 1898 at a point about 4° S. of the brilliant star Vega; but was shifted nearly 7° to the S.W. by J. C. Kapteyn’s inquiry in 1901; so that the range of uncertainty as to its position continues unsatisfactorily wide. The speed with which our system progresses is, on the other hand, fairly well known. It cannot differ much from 1212 m. a second, the rate assigned to it by Professor W. W. Campbell in 1902. He employed in his discussion the radial velocities of 280 stars, spectroscopically Astrophysics. determined; and the upshot signally exemplified the community of interests between the rising science of astrophysics and the ancient science of astrometry. Their characteristic purposes are, nevertheless, entirely different. The positions of the heavenly bodies in space, and the changes of those positions with time, constitute the primary subject of investigation by the elder school; while the new astronomy concerns itself chiefly with the individual peculiarities of suns and planets, with their chemistry, Spectrum analysis.physical habitudes and modes of luminosity. Its distinctive method is spectrum analysis, the invention and development of which in the 19th century have fundamentally altered the purpose and prospects of celestial inquiries.
A beam of sunlight admitted into a darkened room through a narrow aperture, and there dispersed into a vario-tinted band by the interposition of a prism, is not absolutely continuous. Dr W. H. Wollaston made the experiment in 1802, and perceived the spaces of colour to be interrupted Wollaston.
Fraunhofer.by seven obscure gaps, which took the shape of lines owing to his use of rectangular slit. He thus caught a preliminary glimpse of the “Fraunhofer lines,” so called because Joseph Fraunhofer brought them into prominent notice by the diligence and insight of his labours upon them in 1814–1815. He mapped 324, chose out nine, which he designated by the letters of the alphabet, to be standards of measurement for the rest, and ascertained the coincidence in position between the double yellow ray derived from the flame of burning sodium and the pair of dark lines named by him “D” in the solar spectrum. There ensued forty-five years of groping for a law which should clear up the enigma of the solar reversals. Partial anticipations abounded. The vital heart of the matter was barely missed by W. A. Miller in 1845, by L. Foucault in 1849, by A. J. Ångström in 1853, by Balfour Stewart in 1858; while Sir George Stokes held the solution of the problem in the Kirchhoff. hollow of his hand from 1852 onward. But it was the synthetic genius of Gustav Kirchhoff which first gave unity to the scattered phenomena, and finally reconciled what was elicited in the laboratory with what was observed in the sun. On the 15th of December 1859 he communicated to the Berlin Academy of Sciences the principle which bears his name. Its purport is that glowing vapours similarly circumstanced absorb the identical radiations which they emit. That is to say, they stop out just those sections of white light transmitted through them which form their own special luminous badges. Moreover, if the white light come from a source at a higher temperature than theirs, the sections, or lines, absorbed by them show dark against a continuous background. And this is precisely the case with the sun. Kirchhoff’s principle, accordingly, not only afforded a simple explanation of the Fraunhofer lines, but availed to found a far-reaching science of celestial chemistry.Chemistry of
the sun. Thousands of the dark lines in the solar spectrum agree absolutely in wave-length with the bright rays artificially obtained from known substances, and appertaining to them individually. These substances must then exist near the sun. They are in fact suspended in a state of vapour between our eyes and the photosphere, the dazzling prismatic radiance of which they, to a minute extent, intercept, thus writing their signatures on the coloured scroll of dispersed sunshine. By persistent research, powerfully aided by the photographic camera and by the concave gratings invented by H. A. Rowland (1848–1901) in 1882, about forty terrestrial elements have been identified in the sun. Among them, iron, sodium, magnesium, calcium and hydrogen are conspicuous; but it would be rash to assert that any of the seventy forms of matter provisionally enumerated in text-books are wholly absent from his composition.
Solar physics has profited enormously by the abolition of glare during total eclipses. That of the 8th of July 1842 was the first to be efficiently observed; and the luminous appendages to the sun disclosed by it were such as to excite startled attention. Their investigation has Solar eclipses.since been diligently prosecuted. The corona was photographed at Königsberg during the totality of the 28th of July 1851; similar records of the red prominences, successively obtained by Father Angelo Secchi and Warren de la Rue, as the shadow-track crossed Spain on the 18th of July 1860, finally demonstrated their solar status. The Indian eclipse of the 18th of August 1868 supplied knowledge of their spectrum, found to include the yellow ray of an exotic gas named by Sir Norman Lockyer “helium.” It further suggested, to Lockyer and P. Janssen separately, the spectroscopic method of observing these objects in daylight. Under cover of an eclipse visible in North America on the 7th of August 1869, the bright green line of the corona was discerned; and Professor C. A. Young caught the “flash spectrum” of the reversing layer, at the moment of second contact, at Xerez de la Frontera in Spain, on the 22nd of December 1870. This significant but evanescent phenomenon, which represents the direct emissions of a low-lying solar envelope, was photographed by William Shackleton on the occasion of an eclipse in Novaya Zemlya on the 9th of August 1896; and it has since been abundantly registered by exposures made during the obscurations of 1898, 1900, 1901 and 1905. A singular and unlooked-for result of eclipse-work has been to include the corona within the scope of solar periodicity. Heinrich Schwabe established, in 1851, the cyclical variation, in eleven years, of spot-frequency; terrestrial magnetic disturbances manifestly obeyed the same law; and the peculiar winged aspect of the corona disclosed by the eclipse of the 29th of July 1878, at an epoch of minimum sun-spots, intimated to A. C. Ranyard a theory of coronal types, changing concurrently with the fluctuations of spot-activity. This was amply verified at subsequent eclipses.
The photography of prominences was, after some preliminary trials by C. A. Young and others, fully realized in 1891 by Professor George E. Hale at Chicago, and independently by Henri Deslandres at Paris. The pictures were taken, in both cases, with only one quality of light, Prominence photography.the violet ray of calcium, the remaining superfluous beams being eliminated by the agency of a double slit. The
