Popular Science Monthly/Volume 66/November 1904/The Light of the Stars
| THE LIGHT OF THE STARS.[1] |
By Professor E. C. PICKERING,
DIRECTOR OF THE HARVARD COLLEGE OBSERVATORY.
IF an intelligent observer should see the stars for the first time, two of their properties would impress him as subjects for careful study; first, their relative positions, and secondly, their relative brightness. From the first of these has arisen the astronomy of position, or astrometry. This is sometimes called the old astronomy, since until within the last twenty years the astronomers of the world, with few exceptions, devoted their attention almost entirely to it. To the measure of the light should be added the study of the color of the stars (still in its infancy), and the study of their composition by means of the spectroscope. In this way a young giant has been reared, which has almost dwarfed its older brothers. The science of astrophysics, or the new astronomy, has thus been developed, which during the last few years has rejuvenated the science and given to it, by its brilliant discoveries, a public interest which could not otherwise have been awakened. The application to stellar astronomy, of the daguerreotype in 1850, of the photograph in 1857, and of the dry plate in 1882, has opened new fields in almost every department of this science. In some, as in stellar spectroscopy, it has almost completely replaced visual observations.
One department of the new astronomy, the relative brightness of the stars, is as old as, or older than, the old astronomy. An astronomer even now might do useful work in this department without any instruments whatever. Hipparchus is known to have made a catalogue of the stars about 150 B. C. Ptolemy, in 138 A. D., issued that great work, the Almagest, which for fourteen hundred years constituted the principal and almost the sole authority in astronomy. It contained a catalogue of 1,028 stars, perhaps based on that of Hipparchus. Ptolemy used a scale of stellar magnitudes which has continued in use to the present day. He called the brightest stars in the sky, the first magnitude, the faintest visible to the naked eye, the sixth. More strictly, he used the first six letters of the Greek alphabet for this purpose. But he went a step further, and subdivided these classes. If a star seemed bright for its class, he added the letter μ (mu), standing for μειζων (meizon), large or bright; if the star was faint, he added ε (epsilon), standing for ελασσων (elasson), small or faint. These estimates were presumably carefully made, and if we had them now, they would be of the greatest value in determining the secular changes, if any, in the light of the stars. The earliest copy we have of the Almagest is No. 2,389 of the collection in the Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris. It is a beautiful manuscript written in the uncial characters of the ninth century. A few years ago it could be seen by any one in one of the show cases of the library. There are many later manuscripts and printed editions which have been compared by various students. The errors in these various copies are so numerous that there is an uncertainty in the position, magnitude, or identification of about two thirds of the stars. A most important revision was made by the Persian astronomer, Abd-al-rahman al-sufi, who reobserved Ptolemy's stars, A. D. 964, and noted the cases in which he found a difference. The careful study and translation of this work from Arabic into French by Schjellerup has rendered it readily accessible to modern readers.
No important addition to our knowledge of the light of the stars was made until the time of Sir William Herschel, the greatest of modern observers. He found that when two stars were nearly equal, the difference could be estimated very accurately. He designated these intervals by points of punctuation, a period denoting equality, a comma a very small interval, and a dash a larger interval. In 1796 to 1799 he published, in the Philosophical Transactions, four catalogues, covering two thirds of the portion of the sky visible in England. Nearly a century later, it was my great good fortune, when visiting his grandson, to discover in the family library the two catalogues required to complete this work, and which had not been known to exist. These two catalogues are still unpublished. Meanwhile, little or no use had been made of the four published catalogues which, while comparing one star with another, furnished no means of reducing all to one system of magnitudes. The Harvard measures permitted me to do this for all six catalogues, and thus enabled me to publish magnitudes for 2,785 stars observed a century ago, with an accuracy nearly comparable with the best work of the present time. For nearly half a century no great advance was made, and no astronomer was wise enough to see how valuable a work he could do by merely repeating the observations of Herschel. Had this work been extended to the southern stars, and repeated every ten years, our knowledge of the constancy of the light of the stars would have been greatly increased. In 1844, Argelander proposed, in studying variable stars, to estimate small intervals modifying the method of Herschel by using numbers instead of points of punctuation, and thus developed the method known by his name. This is now the best method of determining the light of the stars, when only the naked eye or a telescope is available, and much valuable work might be done by applying it to the fainter stars, and especially to clusters.
Meanwhile photometric measures of the stars, according to various methods, had been undertaken. In 1856, Pogson showed that the scale of magnitudes of Ptolemy, which is still in use, could be nearly represented by assuming the unit to be the constant ratio, 2.512, whose logarithm is 0.4. This has been generally adopted as the basis of the standard photometric scale. The photometer devised by Zöllner has been more widely used than any other. In this instrument an artificial star is reduced any desired amount, by polarized light, until it appears to equal the real star, both being seen side by side in the telescope. Work with this instrument has attained its greatest perfection at the Potsdam Observatory, where measures of the light of the northern stars, whose magnitude is 7.5 and brighter, have been in progress since 1886. The resulting magnitudes have been published for 12,046 stars, included in declination between—2° and—60°. The accidental errors are extremely small, but as the results of different catalogues differ systematically from one another, we can not be sure which is right and what is the real accuracy attained in each case. In 1885 the Uranometria Oxoniensis was published. It gives the magnitudes of 2,784 northern stars north of declination—10°. This work is a remarkable one, especially as its author, Professor Pritchard, began his astronomical career at the age of sixty-three. The method he employed was reducing the light of the stars by means of a wedge of shade glass until they became invisible, and then determining the brightness from the position of the wedge. A careful and laborious investigation, extending over many years has been carried on by Mr. H. M. Parkhurst, using a modification of this method.
For several years before the Oxford and Potsdam measures described above were undertaken, photometric observations were in progress at Harvard. In 1877 a large number of comparisons of adjacent stars were made with a polarizing photometer. Two images of each star were formed with a double image prism, and the relative brightness was varied by turning a Nicol prism until the ordinary image of one star appeared equal to the extraordinary image of the other. Several important sources of error were detected, which once known were easily eliminated. A bright star will greatly affect the apparent brightness of an adjacent faint one, the error often exceeding a magnitude. Systematic errors amounting to several tenths of a magnitude depend upon the relative positions of the images compared. They are perhaps due to the varying sensitiveness of the different parts of the retina. This photometer has many important advantages. However bad the images may be, they are always exactly alike, and may, therefore, be compared with accuracy. Both stars are affected equally by passing clouds, so that this photometer may be used whenever the stars are visible and at times when other photometric work is impossible. The diminution in light also follows a simple geometrical law, and is readily computed with great accuracy. There is no unknown constant to be determined, as in the Pritchard, and nearly all other photometers. The principal objections to this instrument are, first, that stars can not be compared unless they are near together, and, secondly, that faint stars can not be measured, since one half of the light is lost by polarization. The principal uses so far made of this form of photometer are in comparing the components of double stars, and in a long series of observations of the eclipses of Jupiter's satellites, which now extend over a quarter of a century and includes 768 eclipses. Instead of observing the time of disappearance, a series of measurements is made, which gives a light curve for each eclipse. Much important work might yet be done with this form of photometer, in measuring the components of doubles and of clusters, and in determining the light curves of variables which have a moderately bright star near them.
An important improvement was made in this form of photometer in 1892 by which stars as much as half a degree apart could be compared. The cones of light of two such stars are brought together by achromatic prisms, so that they can be compared as in the preceding instrument. As there is no part of the sky in which a suitable comparison star can not be found within this distance, any star may be measured with this instrument. In the hands of Professor Wendell this photometer has given results of remarkable precision. The average deviation of the result of a set of sixteen settings is about three hundredths of a magnitude. Light curves of variables can therefore be determined with great precision, and suspected variables can be divided into those that are certainly variable, and those whose changes are probably less than a tenth of a magnitude.
Another change in this instrument produced the meridian photometer. Instead of using the two cones from one object glass, two object glasses were used, mirrors being placed in front of each. In this way stars however distant can be compared. In theory this instrument leaves but little to be desired. Almost every source of error that can be suggested can be eliminated by proper reversion. As constructed, the telescope is placed horizontally, pointing east or west. One mirror reflects a star near the pole into the field, the other, a star upon the meridian. A slight motion of the mirror permits stars to be observed for several minutes before or after culmination. The first meridian photometer had objectives of only two inches aperture. With this instrument 94,476 measures were made of 4,260 stars during the years 1879 to 1882. All stars were included of the sixth magnitude and brighter, and north of declination −30°. The second instrument had objectives of four inches aperture, and permitted stars as faint as the tenth magnitude to be measured. With this instrument, during the years 1882 to 1888, 267,092 measures were made of 20,982 stars, including all the catalogue stars and all the stars of the ninth magnitude and brighter, in zones twenty minutes wide, and at intervals of five degrees, from the north pole to declination −20°. In 1889 the instrument was sent to South America, where 98,744 measures were made of 7,922 southern stars, extending the two preceding researches to the South Pole. On the return of the instrument to Cambridge 473,216 measures were made of 29,587 stars, including all those of the magnitude 7.5 and brighter north of declination −30°. This work occupied the years 1891 to 1898. The instrument was again sent to Peru in 1899, and 50,816 measures were made of 5,332 stars, including all those of the seventh magnitude and brighter, south of declination −30°. The latest research has been the measurement of a series of stars of about the fifth magnitude, one in each of a series of regions ten degrees square. Each of these stars is measured with the greatest care on ten nights. This work has been completed and published for stars north of declination −30°, 59,428 measures having been made of 839 stars. In this count, numerous other stars have been included. Similar measures are now in progress of the southern stars, this being the third time the meridian photometer has been sent to South America. The total number of measurements exceeds a million, and the number of stars is about sixty thousand. About sixty stars can be identified with care, and each measured four times with this instrument in an hour. The probable error of a set of four settings is ±0.08.
The principal objection to the instrument just described is the great loss of light. To measure very faint stars, another type of photometer has been devised. A twelve-inch telescope has been mounted horizontally, like the meridian photometer, and an artificial star reflected into the field. The light of this star is reduced by a wedge of shade glass until it appears equal to the star to be measured. Four hundred thousand measures have been made with this instrument during the last five years. The principal research has been the measurement of all the stars in the Bonn Durchmusterung which are contained in zones ten minutes wide and at intervals of five degrees, from the north pole to declination −20°. Large numbers of stars of the tenth and eleventh magnitudes are thus furnished as standards of light. As the light of the object observed is unobstructed, any star however faint, if visible in the telescope, may be measured. Accordingly, many stars of the twelfth and thirteenth magnitude have been selected and measured, thus furnishing faint standards. Sequences of standard stars have been selected from coarse clusters, thus permitting estimates or measures of these bodies to be reduced to a uniform photometric scale. An investigation of great value has been carried out successfully at the Georgetown College Observatory by the Rev. J. G. Hagen, S.J. All the stars of the thirteenth magnitude and brighter have been catalogued and charted in a series of regions, each one degree square, surrounding variable stars of long period. Besides measuring the positions he has determined the relative brightness of these stars. A sequence has then been selected from each of these regions, and measured at Harvard with the twelve-inch meridian photometer, thus permitting all to be reduced to a uniform scale. As the photometer was first constructed, stars brighter than the seventh magnitude could not be measured, since they were brighter than the artificial star and could not be rendered equal to it. This difficulty was remedied by inserting a series of shades, the densest of which reduced the light by ten magnitudes. By this method, the range of the photometer may be increased indefinitely. Sirius and stars of the twelfth magnitude have been satisfactorily measured in succession. A further modification of the instrument permitted surfaces to be compared. The light of the sky at night and in the daytime, during twilight, at different distances from the moon, and different portions of the disc of the latter, have thus been compared. Measures extending over seventeen magnitudes, with an average deviation of about three hundredths of a magnitude, were obtained in this way. One light was thus compared with another six million times as bright as itself. A slight modification would permit the intrinsic brightness of the different portions of the sun's disc to be compared with that of the faintest nebulæ visible. By these instruments, the scale of photometric magnitudes has been carried as far as the thirteenth magnitude. To provide standards for fainter stars, a small appropriation was made by the Rumford Committee of the American Academy. Cooperation was secured among the directors of the Yerkes, Lick, McCormick, Halsted and Harvard Observatories. Similar photometers were constructed for all, in which an artificial star was reduced any desired amount by a photographic wedge. Telescopes of 40, 36, 26, 23 and 15 inches aperture, including the two largest refractors in the world, were thus used in the same way on the same research. The standards have all been selected, and nearly all of the measurements have been made. This furnishes a striking illustration of the advantages of cooperation, and combined organization. When these observations are reduced, we shall have standards of magnitude according to a uniform scale, for all stars from the brightest to the faintest visible in the largest telescopes at present in use. The sixty-inch reflector of the late A. A. Common has recently been secured by the Harvard Observatory. It is hoped that still fainter stars may be measured with this instrument.
We have as yet only considered the total light of a star, so far as it affects the eye. But this light consists of rays of many different wave lengths. In red stars, one color predominates, in blue, another. The true method is to compare the light of a given wave-length in different stars, and then to determine the relative intensity of the rays of different wave-lengths in different stars, or at least in stars whose spectra are of different types. This is the only true method, and fortunately spectrum photography permits it to be done. The Draper catalogue gives the class of spectrum of 10,351 stars, and the relative brightness of the light whose wave-length is 430, is determined for each. In 1891, measures were published of the relative light of rays of various wave-lengths, for a number of stars whose spectra were of the first, second and third types.
A much simpler, but less satisfactory method, is to measure the total light in a photographic image. As in the case of eye photometry, this method is open to the objection that rays of different colors are combined. Blue stars will appear relatively brighter, and red stars relatively fainter, in the photograph than to the eye. This, however, is an advantage rather than an objection, since it appears to furnish the best practical measure of the color of the stars. Relative photographic magnitudes can be obtained in a variety of ways, and the real difficulty is to reduce them to an absolute scale of magnitudes. But for this, photographic might supersede photometric magnitudes. In other respects, photography possesses all the advantages for this work that it has for other purposes, and many photometric problems are within the reach of photography, which seems hopeless by visual methods. In 1857, Professor George P. Bond, the father of stellar photography, showed that the relative light of the stars could be determined from the diameter of their photographic images. This is the method that has been generally adopted elsewhere in determining photographic magnitudes, although with results that are far from satisfactory. It is singular that although this-method originated at Harvard, it is almost the only one not in use here, while a great variety of other methods have been applied to many thousands of stars, during the last eighteen years. Relative measures are obtained very satisfactorily by applying the Herschel-Argelander method to photographic images, and if these could be reduced to absolute magnitudes, it would leave but little to be desired. In the attempt to determine absolute magnitudes a variety of methods has been employed. The simplest is to form a scale by photographing a series of images, using different exposures. The image of any star may be compared directly with such a scale. To avoid the uncertain correction due to the times of exposure, different apertures may be used instead of different exposures. Another method is to attach a small prism to the objective. The image of every bright star is then accompanied by a second image a few minutes of arc distant from it, and fainter by a constant amount, as five magnitudes. Trails may be measured more accurately than circular images, and trails of stars near the pole have varying velocities, which may then be compared with one another by means of a scale. Again, images out of focus may be compared with great accuracy and rapidity by means of a photographic wedge. These comparisons promise to furnish excellent magnitudes, if they can only be reduced to the photometric scale. A catalogue giving the photographic magnitudes of 1,131 stars within two degrees of the equator, and determined from their trails, was published in 1889. Great care was taken to eliminate errors due to right ascension, so that standards in remote portions of the sky are comparable. A similar work on polar stars at upper and lower culmination determined the photographic absorption of the atmosphere, which is nearly twice as great as the visual absorption. A catalogue of forty thousand stars of the tenth magnitude, one in each square degree, has been undertaken, and the measures are nearly complete for the portion of the sky extending from the equator to declination +30°. These stars are compared, by means of a scale, with the prismatic companions of adjacent bright stars. Two measures have been made of images out of focus of 8,489 stars, including all of those north of declination −20°, and brighter than the seventh magnitude. This work is being continued to the south pole. The most important completed catalogue of photographic magnitudes is the 'Cape Photographic Durchmusterung,' the monumental work of Gill and Kapteyn. 454,875 stars south of declination −19° are included in this work. Unfortunately, the difficulty mentioned above, of reducing the magnitudes to an absolute system, has not been wholly overcome, but the work is published in a form which will permit this to be done later, if a method of reduction can be discovered. The extension of this great work to the north pole is one of the greatest needs of astronomy at the present time.
The map and catalogue of the Astrophotographic Congress, the most extensive research ever undertaken by astronomers, will not be discussed here, as it will doubtless be described by others better able than I, to explain its merits. If completed, and if the difficulty of reducing the measures of brightness to a standard scale can be overcome, it will furnish the photographic magnitudes, as well as the positions, of two million stars. Time does not permit the consideration here of certain other investigations of photographic magnitudes, such as those made at Groningen. They generally relate to a comparatively small number of stars. The suggestion that the intensity of a photographic star image be measured by the amount of light it cuts off from a thermo-pile, deserves careful study. It should give a great increase in precision, and would eliminate that tool of many defects, the human eye. No use seems to have been made so far of this method.
The next question to be considered is, what use should be made of these various measures of the light of the stars? The most obvious application of them is to variable stars. While the greater portion of the stars undergo no changes in light that are perceptible, several hundred have been found whose light changes. A natural classification seems to be that proposed by the writer in 1880. A few stars appear suddenly, and are called new stars, or novas. They form class I. Class II. consists of stars which vary by a large amount during periods of several months. They are known as variable stars of long period. Class III. contains stars whose variations are small and irregular. Class IV. contains the variable stars of short period, and Class V. the Algol variables, which are usually of full brightness but at regular intervals grow faint, owing to the interposition of a dark companion. Twenty years ago, when photography was first applied to the discovery of variable stars, only about two hundred and fifty of these objects were known. Since then, three remarkable discoveries have been made, by means of which their number has been greatly increased. The first was by Mrs. Fleming, who, in studying the photographs of the Henry Draper Memorial, found that the stars of the third type, in which the hydrogen lines are bright, are variables of long period. From this property she has discovered 128 new variables, and has also shown how they may be classified from their spectra. The differences between the first, second and third types of spectra are not so great as those between the spectra of different variables of long period. The second discovery is that of Professor Bailey, who found that certain globular clusters contain large numbers of variable stars of short period. He has discovered 509 new variables, 396 of them in four clusters. The third discovery, made by Professor Wolf, of Heidelberg, that variables occur in large nebulæ, has led to his discovery of 65 variables. By similar work, Miss Leavitt has found 295 new variables. The total number of variable stars discovered by photography during the last fifteen years is probably five times the entire number found visually up to the present time. Hundreds of thousands of photometric measures will be required to determine the light curves, periods and laws regulating the changes these objects undergo.
A far more comprehensive problem, and perhaps the greatest in astronomy, is that of the distribution of the stars, and the constitution of the stellar universe. No one can look at the heavens, and see such clusters as the Pleiades, Hyades and Coma Berenices, without being convinced that the distribution is not due to chance. This view is strengthened by the clusters and doubles seen in even a small telescope. We also see at once that the stars must be of different sizes, and that the faint stars are not necessarily the most distant. If the number of stars was infinite, and distributed according to the laws of chance throughout infinite and empty space, the background of the sky would be as bright as the surface of the sun. This is far from being the case. While we can thus draw general conclusions, but little definite information can be obtained, without accurate quantitative measures, and this is one of the greatest objects of stellar photometry. If we consider two spheres, with the sun as the common center, and one having ten times the radius of the other, the volume of the first will be one thousand times as great as that of the second. It will, therefore, contain a thousand times as many stars. But the most distant stars in the first sphere would be ten times as far off as those in the second sphere, and accordingly if equally bright would appear to have only one hundredth part of the apparent brightness. Expressed in stellar magnitudes, they would be five magnitudes fainter. In reality, the total number of stars of the fifth magnitude and brighter is about 1,500; of the tenth magnitude, 373,000 instead of 1,500,000, as we should expect. An absorbing medium in space, which would dim the light of the more distant stars, is a possible explanation, but this hypothesis does not agree with the actual figures. An examination of the number of adjacent stars shows that it is far in excess of what would be expected if the stars were distributed by chance. Of the three thousand double stars in the 'Mensuræ Micrometricæ' the number of stars optically double, or of those which happen to be in line, according to the theory of probabilities, is only about forty. This fact should be recognized in any conclusions regarding the motions of the fixed stars, based upon measures of their position with regard to adjacent bright stars.
We have here neglected all conclusions based upon the difference in composition of different stars. Photographs of their spectra furnish the material for studying this problem in detail. About half of the stars have spectra in which the broad hydrogen lines are the distinguishing feature. They are of the first type, and belong to class A of the classification of the Henry Draper Memorial. The Milky Way consists so completely of such stars that if they were removed it would not be visible. The Orion stars, forming class B, a subdivision of the first type in which the lines of helium are present, are still more markedly concentrated in the Milky Way. A large part of the other stars, forming one third of the whole, have spectra closely resembling that of the sun. They are. of the second type, and form classes C and K. These stars are distributed nearly uniformly in all parts of the sky. Class M, the third type, follows the same law. Class F, whose spectrum is intermediate between classes A and C, follows the same law of distribution as classes G-and K, but differs from them, if at all, in the opposite direction from class A. There, therefore, seem to be actually fewer of these stars in the Milky Way than outside of it. One class of stars, the fifth type, class O, has a very remarkable spectrum and distribution. A large part of the light is monochromatic. Of the ninety-six stars of this type so far discovered, twenty-one are in the Large Magellanic Cloud, one in the Small Magellanic Cloud, and the remainder follow the central line of the Milky Way so closely that the average distance from it is only two degrees. All of these stars, with the exception of sixteen, have been found by means of the Henry Draper Memorial.
It will be seen from the above discussion that stellar photometry in its broadest sense furnishes the means of attacking, and perhaps of solving, the greatest problem presented to the mind of man—the structure and constitution of the stellar universe, of which the solar system itself is but a minute and insignificant molecule.
- ↑ An address at the International Congress of Arts and Science, St. Louis, September, 1904.