Curiosities of the Sky, Garrett Putman Serviss [free novel reading sites txt] 📗

spectators that mingling of admiration and awe of which Bailey speaks. The South Carolinians gave a cheer and the ladies waved their handkerchiefs when the corona, ineffably delicate of form and texture, melted into sight and then in two minutes melted away again. The Spaniards, crowded on the citadel hill of Burgos, with their king and his royal retinue in their midst, broke out with a great clapping of hands as the awaited spectacle unfolded itself in the sky; and on both occasions, before the applause began, after an awed silence a low murmur ran through the crowds. At Burgos it is said many made the sign of the cross.

It was not long before Bailey's idea that the prominences were a part of the corona was abandoned, and it was perceived that the two phenomena were to a great extent independent. At the eclipse of 1868, which the astronomers, aroused by the wonderful scene of 1842, and eager to test the powers of the newly invented spectroscope, flocked to India to witness, Janssen conceived the idea of employing the spectroscope to render the prominences visible when there was no eclipse. He succeeded the very next day, and these phenomena have been studied in that way ever since.

There are recognized two kinds of prominences -- the ``erruptive'' and the ``quiescent.'' The latter, which are cloud-like in form, may be seen almost anywhere along the edge of the sun; but the former, which often shoot up as if hurled from mighty volcanoes, appear to be associated with sun-spots, and appear only above the zones where spots abound. Either of them, when seen in projection against the brilliant solar disk, appears white, not red, as against a background of sky. The quiescent prominences, whose elevation is often from forty thousand to sixty thousand miles, consist, as the spectroscope shows, mainly of hydrogen and helium. The latter, it will be remembered, is an element which was known to be in the sun many years before the discovery that it also exists in small quantities on the earth. A fact which may have a significance which we cannot at present see is that the emanation from radium gradually and spontaneously changes into helium, an alchemistical feat of nature that has opened many curious vistas to speculative thinkers. The eruptive prominences, which do not spread horizontally like the others, but ascend with marvelous velocity to elevations of half a million miles or more, are apparently composed largely of metallic vapors -- i.e. metals which are usually solid on the earth, but which at solar temperatures are kept in a volatilized state. The velocity of their ascent occasionally amounts to three hundred or four hundred miles per second. It is known from mathematical considerations that the gravitation of the sun would not be able to bring back any body that started from its surface with a velocity exceeding three hundred and eighty-three miles per second; so it is evident that some of the matter hurled forth in eruptive prominences may escape from solar control and go speeding out into space, cooling and condensing into solid masses. There seems to be no reason why some of the projectiles from the sun might not reach the planets. Here, then, we have on a relatively small scale, explosions recalling those which it has been imagined may be the originating cause of some of the sudden phenomena of the stellar heavens.

Of the sun-spots it is not our intention here specifically to speak, but they evidently have an intimate connection with eruptive prominences, as well as some relation, not yet fully understood, with the corona. Of the real cause of sun-spots we know virtually nothing, but recent studies by Professor Hale and others have revealed a strange state of things in the clouds of metallic vapors floating above them and their surroundings. Evidences of a cyclonic tendency have been found, and Professor Hale has proved that sun-spots are strong magnetic fields, and consist of columns of ionized vapors rotating in opposite directions in the two hemispheres. A fact which may have the greatest significance is that titanium and vanadium have been found both in sun-spots and in the remarkable variable Mira Ceti, a star which every eleven months, or thereabout, flames up with great brilliancy and then sinks back to invisibility with the naked eye. It has been suggested that sun-spots are indications of the beginning of a process in the sun which will be intensified until it falls into the state of such a star as Mira. Stars very far advanced in evolution, without showing variability, also exhibit similar spectra; so that there is much reason for regarding sunspots as emblems of advancing age.

The association of the corona with sun-spots is less evident than that of the eruptive prominences; still such an association exists, for the form and extent of the corona vary with the sun-spot period of which we shall presently speak. The constitution of the corona remains to be discovered. It is evidently in part gaseous, but it also probably contains matter in the form of dust and small meteors. It includes one substance altogether mysterious -- ``coronium.'' There are reasons for thinking that this may be the lightest of all the elements, and Professor Young, its discoverer, said that it was ``absolutely unique in nature; utterly distinct from any other known form of matter, terrestial, solar, or cosmical.'' The enormous extent of the corona is one of its riddles. Since the development of the curious subject of the ``pressure of light'' it has been proposed to account for the sustentation of the corona by supposing that it is borne upon the billows of light continually poured out from the sun. Experiment has proved, what mathematical considerations had previously pointed out as probable, that the waves of light exert a pressure or driving force, which becomes evident in its effects if the body acted upon is sufficiently small. In that case the light pressure will prevail over the attraction of gravitation, and propel the attenuated matter away from the sun in the teeth of its attraction. The earth itself would be driven away if, instead of consisting of a solid globe of immense aggregate mass, it were a cloud of microscopic particles. The reason is that the pressure varies in proportion to the surface of the body acted upon, while the gravitational attraction is proportional to the volume, or the total amount of matter in the body. But the surface of any body depends upon the square of its diameter, while the volume depends upon the cube of the diameter. If, for instance, the diameter is represented by 4, the surface will be proportional to 4 × 4, or 16, and the volume to 4 × 4 × 4, or 64; but if the diameter is taken as 2, the surface will be 2 × 2, or 4, and the volume 2 × 2 × 2, or 8. Now, the ratio of 4 to 8 is twice as great as that of 16 to 64. If the diameter is still further decreased, the ratio of the surface to the volume will proportionally grow larger; in other words, the pressure will gain upon the attraction, and whatever their original ratio may have been, a time will come, if the diminution of size continues, when the pressure will become more effective than the attraction, and the body will be driven away. Supposing the particles of the corona to be below the critical size for the attraction of a mass like that of the sun to control them, they would be driven off into the surrounding space and appear around the sun like the clouds of dust around a mill. We shall return to this subject in connection with the Zodiacal Light, the Aurora, and Comets.

On the other hand, there are parts of the corona which suggest by their forms the play of electric or magnetic forces. This is beautifully shown in some of the photographs that have been made of the corona during recent eclipses. Take, for instance, that of the eclipse of 1900. The sheaves of light emanating from the poles look precisely like the ``lines of force'' surrounding the poles of a magnet. It will be noticed in this photograph that the corona appears to consist of two portions: one comprising the polar rays just spoken of, and the other consisting of the broader, longer, and less-defined masses of light extending out from the equatorial and middle-latitude zones. Yet even in this more diffuse part of the phenomenon one can detect the presence of submerged curves bearing more or less resemblance to those about the poles. Just what part electricity or electro-magnetism plays in the mechanism of the solar radiation it is impossible to say, but on the assumption that it is a very important part is based the hypothesis that there exists a direct solar influence not only upon the magnetism, but upon the weather of the earth. This hypothesis has been under discussion for half a century, and still we do not know just how much truth it represents. It is certain that the outbreak of great disturbances on the sun, accompanied by the formation of