If you examine the sun through an ordinary solar microscope, you
discover that it has a curdled or mottled appearance, as though
suffering from biliousness. It is also marked here and there by long
streaks of light, called faculae, which look like foam flecks below a
cataract. The spots on the sun vary from minute pores the size of an
ordinary school district to spots 100,000 miles in diameter, visible to
the nude eye. The center of these spot's is as black as a brunette cat,
and is called the umbra, so called because is resembles an umbrella. The
next circle is less dark, and called the penumbra, because it so closely
resembles the penumbra.
There are many theories regarding these spots, but, to be perfectly
candid with the gentle reader, neither Prof. Proctor nor myself can
tell exactly what they are. If we could get a little closer, we flatter
ourselves that we could speak more definitely. My own theory is they are
either, first, open air caucuses held by the colored people of the sun;
or, second, they may be the dark horses in the campaign; or, third, they
may be the spots knocked off the defeated candidate by the opposition.
Frankly, however, I do not believe either of these theories to be
tenable. Prof. Proctor sneers at these theories also on the ground that
these spots do not appear to revolve so fast as the sun. This, however,
I am prepared to explain upon the theory that this might be the result
of delays in the returns. However, I am free to confess that speculative
science is filled with the intangible. .
The sun revolves upon his or her axletree, as the case may be, Once in
25 to 28 of our days, so that a man living there would have almost two
years to pay a 30-day note. We should so live that when we come to die
we may go at once to the sun.
Regarding the sun's temperature, Sir John Herschel says that it is
sufficient to melt a shell of ice covering its entire surface to a depth
of 40 feet. I do not know whether he made this experiment personally or
hired a man to do it for him.
The sun is like the star spangled banner--as it is "still there." You
get up to-morrow morning just before sunrise and look away toward the
east, and keep on looking in that direction, and at last you will, see a
fine sight, if what I have been told is true. If the sunrise is as grand
as the sunset, it indeed must be one of nature's most sublime phenomena.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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