History, Modern -- 19th century; Nineteenth century
It was only natural that as advances were made the instrumental
equipment should keep pace with them. Spectroscopes were built on
a larger scale; more prisms, which meant greater dispersion, were
employed to render the measurements of the lines in spectra more
accurate. The growth of our knowledge especially necessitated the
making of maps of the lines in the solar spectrum, and in the spectra
of the chemical elements which had been compared with it on a natural
scale. This was done by Angström, who utilized for this purpose the
diffraction grating invented by Fraunhofer, and defined the position of
all lines in spectra by their “wave lengths,” in ten-millionths of a
millimetre or “tenth-metres.”
In 1862 Rutherfurd extended Fraunhofer’s work on the stars by a first
attempt at classification. Two years later Huggins and Miller produced
maps of the spectra of some stars. Donati demonstrated that comets gave
radiation spectra, and Huggins did the same for nebulæ.
By these observations comets and nebulæ were shown to be
spectroscopically different from stars, which at that time were studied
by their dark lines only.
Chiefly by the labors of Pickering, the energetic head of the Harvard
Observatory, science has been enriched during the later years by
observations of thousands of stellar spectra, the study of which has
brought about the most marvellous advance in our knowledge.
These priceless data have enabled us now to classify the stars not only
by their brightness, or their color, but by their chemistry.
Next to be chronicled is the application of the so-called
Doppler-Fizeau principle, which teaches us that when a light source
is approaching or receding from us the light waves are crushed
together or drawn out, so that the wave length is changed. The amount
of change gives us the velocity of approach or recess, so that the
rate of movement of stars towards or from the earth, or the up-rush
or down-rush of the solar vapors on the sun’s disk can be accurately
determined. A further utilization of this principle is found when the
stars are so close together that they appear as one if the plane of
motion passes near the earth. A line common to the spectra of both
stars will appear double twice in each revolution, when the motion to
or from the earth, or, as it is termed, “in the line of sight,” is
greatest. “Spectroscopic doubles,” as these stars are called, yield
up many of their secrets which otherwise would elude us. Their time
of revolution, the size of the orbit, and the combined mass can be
determined.
To return from the stars to the sun.
By the device of throwing an image of the sun on the slit of the
spectroscope the spectra of solar spots have been studied from 1866
onward, and a little later the brighter portions of the sun’s outer
envelopes, revealed till then only during eclipses, were brought within
our ken spectroscopically, so that they are now studied every day.
CELESTIAL PHOTOGRAPHY
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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