The Popular Science Monthly, July, 1900: Vol. 57, May, 1900 to October, 1900Various
Science
The Popular Science Monthly, July, 1900: Vol. 57, May, 1900 to October, 1900
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
Professor Hale, of the Yerkes Observatory, was a member of the party,
while still in general charge of the Yerkes expedition, and his
counsel and aid were of the greatest service. Mr. Clayton, of Blue
Hill Meteorological Station, occupied a part of the grounds of the
Smithsonian party.
The main object of investigation was, of course, the corona, and of
this, (first) a photographic and visual study of its structure; with,
(second) a determination by the bolometer whether appreciable heat
reaches us from it, and, if possible, an examination of the form of its
spectrum energy curve.
The writer had been particularly struck, when observing the eclipse
of 1878 on Pike’s Peak, by the remarkable definiteness of filamentary
structure close to the sun’s limb, and had never found in any
photographs, not even in the excellent ones of Campbell taken at the
Indian eclipse of 1898, anything approaching what he saw in the few
seconds which he was able to devote to visual observations at the
height of fourteen thousand feet. His wish to examine this inner
coronal region with a more powerful photographic telescope than any
heretofore used upon it, was gratified by the most valued loan by
Prof. E. C. Pickering of the new 12-inch achromatic lens of 135 feet
focus, just obtained for the Harvard College Observatory. This lens,
furnishing a focal image of more than 15 inches diameter, was mounted
so as to give a horizontal beam from a cœlostat clock-driven mirror by
Brashear, of 18 inches aperture, and used with 30-inch square plates.
To supplement this great instrument, a 5-inch lens of 38-feet focus,
loaned by Professor Young, was pointed directly at the sun. This
formed images upon 11 × 14 plates moved in the focus of the lens by a
water clock. Specially equatorially mounted lenses of 6, 4 and 3-inch
aperture, driven by clock work, were provided for the study of the
outer corona, and the search for possible intra-mercurial planets.
For the bolometric work, the massive siderostat with its 17-inch
mirror, and a large part of the delicate adjuncts employed at the
Smithsonian Institution in recent years, to investigate the sun’s
spectrum, was transported to Wadesboro. The excessively sensitive
galvanometer reached camp without injury even to its suspending fibre,
a thread of quartz crystal 1-15,000 inch in diameter.
Besides these two chief aims (the photography and bolometry of the
inner corona), several other pieces of work were undertaken, including
the automatic reproduction of the ‘flash spectrum’ by means of an
objective prism with the 135-foot lens, the photographic study of the
outer coronal region, including provision for recognizing possible
intra-mercurial planets, already alluded to, visual and photographic
observations of times of contact, and sketches of the corona, both from
telescopic and naked-eye observations.
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