A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century: Fourth EditionClerke, Agnes M. (Agnes Mary)
History
A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century: Fourth Edition
Clerke, Agnes M. (Agnes Mary)
Astronomy -- History -- 19th century
The flight of the moon's shadow was, on August 9, 1896, dogged by
atrocious weather. It traversed, besides, some of the most inhospitable
regions on the earth's surface, and afforded, at the best, but a brief
interval of obscurity. At Novaya Zemlya, however, of all places, the
conditions were tolerably favourable, and, as we have seen, the trophy
of a "flash-spectrograph" was carried off. Some coronal photographs,
moreover, taken by the late Sir George Baden-Powell[574] and by M.
Hansky, a member of a Russian party, were marked by features of
considerable interest. They made apparent a close connection between
coronal outflows and chromospheric jets, cone-shaped beams serving as
the sheaths, or envelopes, of prominences. M. Hansky,[575] indeed,
thought that every streamer had a chromospheric eruption at its base.
Further, dark veinings of singular shapes unmistakably interrupted the
coronal light, and bordered brilliant prominences,[576] reminding us of
certain "black lines" traced by Swift across the "anvil protuberance"
August 7, 1869.[577] In type the corona of 1896 reproduced that of 1886,
as befitted its intermediate position in the solar cycle.
The eclipse-track on January 22, 1898, crossed the Indian peninsula from
Viziadrug, on the Malabar coast, to Mount Everest in the Himalayas. Not
a cloud obstructed the view anywhere, and an unprecedented harvest of
photographic records was garnered. The flash-spectrum, in its successive
phases, appeared on plates taken by Sir Norman Lockyer, Mr. Evershed,
Professor Campbell,[578] and others; Professor Turner[579] set on foot a
novel mode of research by picturing the corona in the polarised
ingredient of its light; Mrs. Maunder[580] practically solved the
problem of photographing the faint coronal extensions, one ray on her
plates running out to nearly six diameters from the moon's limb. Yet she
used a Dallmeyer lens of only one and a half inches aperture. Her
success accorded perfectly with Professor Wadsworth's conclusion that
effectiveness in delineation by slight contrasts of luminosity varies
inversely with aperture. Triple-coated plates, and a comparatively long
exposure of twenty seconds, contributed to a result unlikely, for some
time, to be surpassed. The corona of 1898 presented a mixed aspect. The
polar plumes due at minimum were combined in it with the quadrilateral
ogives belonging to spot-maxima. A slow course of transformation, in
fact, seemed in progress; and it was found to be completed in 1900, when
the eclipse of May 28 revealed the typical halo of a quiescent sun.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account