Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887Various
Science
Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887
Various
Science -- Periodicals
For, however small the particles may be, they will have a greater
tendency to sink in a rare air than in a denser one, and less water vapor
can be held per cubic foot. Looking, then, from my laboratory at South
Kensington, we have to look through a proportionately larger quantity of
suspended particles than we have at a high altitude when the air
thicknesses are the same. And consequently the absorption is
proportionately greater at sea level that at 8,000 feet high. This leads
us to the fact that the real intensity of illumination of the different
rays outside the atmosphere is greater than it is calculated from
observations near sea level. Prof. Langley, in this theater, in a
remarkable and interesting lecture, in which he described his journey up
Mount Whitney to about 12,000 feet, told us that the sun was really blue
outside our atmosphere, and at first blush the amount of extra blue which
he deduced to be present in it would, he thought, make it so. But though
he surmised the result from experiments made with rotating disks of
colored paper, he did not, I think, try the method of using pure colors,
and consequently, I believe, slightly exaggerated the blueness which
would result.
I have taken Prof. Langley's calculations of the increase of intensity
for the different rays, which I may say do not quite agree with mine, and
I have prepared a mask which I can place in the spectrum, giving the
different proportions of each ray as calculated by him, and this when
placed in front of the spectrum will show you that the real color of
sunlight outside the atmosphere, as calculated by Langley, can scarcely
be called bluish. Alongside I place a patch of light which is very
closely the color of sunlight on a July day at noon in England. This
comparison will enable you to gauge the blueness, and you will see that
it is not very blue, and, in fact, not bluer perceptibly than that we
have at the Riffel, the color of the sunlight at which place I show in a
similar way. I have also prepared some screens to show you the value of
sunlight after passing through five and ten atmospheres. On an ordinary
clear day you will see what a yellowness there is in the color. It seems
that after a certain amount of blue is present in white light, the
addition of more makes but little difference in the tint. But these last
patches show that the light which passes through the atmosphere when it
is feebly charged with particles does not induce the red of the sun as
seen through a fog. It only requires more suspended particles in any
thickness to induce it.
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