The Story of the Heavens, Sir Robert Stawell Ball [snow like ashes series TXT] 📗

the intricacies which cannot be described in general language. The mathematician finds that waves would originate in the supposed fluid, and that as these waves would lead to disruption of the rings, the fluid theory must be abandoned.

But we can still make one or two more suppositions. What if it be really true that the ring consist of an incredibly large number of concentric rings, each animated precisely with the velocity which would be suitable to the production of a centrifugal force just adequate to neutralise the attraction? No doubt this meets many of the difficulties: it is also suggested by those observations which have shown the presence of several dark lines on the ring. Here again dynamical considerations must be invoked for the reply. Such a system of solid rings is not compatible with the laws of dynamics.

We are, therefore, compelled to make one last attempt, and still further to subdivide the ring. It may seem rather startling to abandon entirely the supposition that the ring is in any sense a continuous body, but there remains no alternative. Look at it how we will, we seem to be conducted to the conclusion that the ring is really an enormous shoal of extremely minute bodies; each of these little bodies pursues an orbit of its own around the planet, and is, in fact, merely a satellite. These bodies are so numerous and so close together that they seem to us to be continuous, and they may be very minute--perhaps not larger than the globules of water found in an ordinary cloud over the surface of the earth, which, even at a short distance, seems like a continuous body.

Until a few years ago this theory of the constitution of Saturn's rings, though unassailable from a mathematical point of view, had never been confirmed by observation. The only astronomer who maintained that he had actually seen the rings rotate was W. Herschel, who watched the motion of some luminous points on the ring in 1789, at which time the plane of the ring happened to pass through the earth. From these observations Herschel concluded that the ring rotated in ten hours and thirty-two minutes. But none of the subsequent observers, even though they may have watched Saturn with instruments very superior to that used by Herschel, were ever able to succeed in verifying his rotation of these appendages of Saturn. If the ring were composed of a vast number of small bodies, then the third law of Kepler will enable us to calculate the time which these tiny satellites would require to travel completely round the planet. It appears that any satellite situated at the outer edge of the ring would require as long a period as 13 hrs. 46 min., those about the middle would not need more than 10 hrs. 28 min., while those at the inner edge of the ring would accomplish their rotation in 7 hrs. 28 min. Even our mightiest telescopes, erected in the purest skies and employed by the most skilful astronomers, refuse to display this extremely delicate phenomenon. It would, indeed, have been a repetition on a grand scale of the curious behaviour of the inner satellite of Mars, which revolves round its primary in a shorter time than the planet itself takes to turn round on its own axis.

But what the telescope could not show, the spectroscope has lately demonstrated in a most effective and interesting manner. We have explained in the chapter on the sun how the motion of a source of light along the line of vision, towards or away from the observer, produces a slight shift in the position of the lines of the spectrum. By the measurement of the displacement of the lines the direction and amount of the motion of the source of light may be determined. We illustrated the method by showing how it had actually been used to measure the speed of rotation of the solar surface. In 1895 Professor Keeler,[26] Director of the Allegheny Observatory, succeeded in measuring the rotation of Saturn's ring in this manner. He placed the slit of his spectroscope across the ball, in the direction of the major axis of the elliptic figure which the effect of perspective gives the ring as shown by the parallel lines in Fig. 66 stretching from E to W. His photographic plate should then show three spectra close together, that of the ball of Saturn in the middle, separated by dark intervals from the narrower spectra above and below it of the two handles (or ansae, as they are generally called) of the ring. In Fig. 67 we have represented the behaviour of any one line of the spectrum under various suppositions as to rotation or non-rotation of Saturn and the ring. At the top (1) we see how each line would look if there was no rotatory motion; the three lines produced by ring, planet, and ring are in a straight line. Of course the spectrum, which is practically a very faint copy of the solar spectrum, shows the principal dark Fraunhofer lines, so that the reader must imagine these for himself, parallel to the one we show in the figure. But Saturn and the ring are not standing still, they are rotating, the eastern part (at E) moving towards us, and the western part (W) moving away from us.[27] At E the line will therefore be shifted towards the violet end of the spectrum and at W towards the red, and as the actual linear velocity is greater the further we get away from the centre of Saturn (assuming ring and planet to rotate together), the lines would be turned as in Fig. 67 (2), but the three would remain in a straight line. If the ring consisted of two independent rings separated by Cassini's division and rotating with different velocities, the lines would be situated as in Fig. 67 (3), the lines due to the inner ring being more deflected than those due to the outer ring, owing to the greater velocity of the inner ring.

Finally, let us consider the case of the rings, consisting of innumerable particles moving round the planet in accordance with Kepler's third law. The actual velocities of these particles would be per second:--


At outer edge of ring
10.69 miles.
At middle of ring
11.68 miles.
At inner edge of ring
13.01 miles.
Rotation speed at surface of planet
6.38 miles.


The shifting of the lines of the spectrum should be in accordance with these velocities, and it is easy to see that the lines ought to lie as in the fourth figure. When Professor Keeler came to examine the photographed spectra, he found the lines of the three spectra tilted precisely in this manner, showing that the outer edge of the ring was travelling round the planet with a smaller linear velocity than the inner one, as it ought to do if the sources of light (or, rather, the reflectors of sunlight) were independent particles free to move according to Kepler's third law, and as it ought not to do if the ring, or rings, were rigid, in which case the outer edge would have the greatest linear speed, as it had to travel through the greatest distance. Here, at last, was the proof of the meteoritic composition of Saturn's ring. Professor Keeler's beautiful discovery has since been verified by repeated observations at the Allegheny, Lick, Paris, and Pulkova Observatories; the actual velocities resulting from the observed displacements of the lines have been measured and found to agree well (within the limits of the errors of observation) with the calculated velocities, so that this brilliant confirmation of the mathematical deductions of Clerk Maxwell is raised beyond the possibility of doubt.

The spectrum of Saturn is so faint that only the strongest lines of the solar spectrum can be seen in it, but the atmosphere of the planet seems to exert a considerable amount of general absorption in the blue and violet parts of the spectrum, which is especially strong near the equatorial belt, while a strong band in the red testifies to the density of the atmosphere. This band is not seen in the spectrum of the rings, around which there can therefore be no atmosphere.

As Saturn's ring is itself unique, we cannot find elsewhere any very pertinent illustration of a structure so remarkable as that now claimed for the ring. Yet the solar system does show some analogous phenomena. There is, for instance, one on a very grand scale surrounding the sun himself. We allude to the multitude of minor planets, all confined within a certain region of the system. Imagine these planets to be vastly increased in number, and those orbits which are much inclined to the rest flattened down and otherwise adjusted, and we should have a ring surrounding the sun, thus producing an arrangement not dissimilar from that now attributed to Saturn.

It is tempting to linger still longer over this beautiful system, to speculate on the appearance which the ring would present to an inhabitant of Saturn, to conjecture whether it is to be regarded as a permanent feature of our system in the same way as we attribute permanence to our moon or to the satellites of Jupiter. Looked at from every point of view, the question is full of interest, and it provides occupation abundant for the labours of every type of astronomer. If he be furnished with a good telescope, then has he ample duties to fulfil in the task of surveying, of sketching, and of measuring. If he be one of those useful astronomers who devote their energies not to actual telescopic work, but to forming calculations based on the observations of others, then the beautiful system of Saturn provides copious material. He has to foretell the different phases of the ring, to announce to astronomers when each feature can be best seen, and at what hour each element can be best determined. He has also to predict the times of the movements of Saturn's satellites, and the other phenomena of a system more elaborate than that of Jupiter.

Lastly, if the astronomer be one of that class--perhaps, from some points of view, the highest class of all--who employ the most profound researches of the human intellect to unravel the dynamical problems of astronomy, he, too, finds in Saturn problems which test to the utmost, even if they do not utterly transcend, the loftiest flights of analysis. He discovers in Saturn's ring an object so utterly unlike anything else, that new mathematical weapons have to be forged for the encounter. He finds in the system so many extraordinary features, and such delicacy of adjustment, that he is constrained to admit that if he did not actually see Saturn's rings before him, he would not have thought that such a system was possible. The mathematician's labours on this wondrous system are at present only in their infancy. Not alone are the researches of so abstruse a character as to demand the highest genius for this branch of science, but even yet the materials for the inquiry have not been accumulated. In a discussion of this character, observation must precede calculation. The scanty observations hitherto obtained, however they may illustrate the beauty of the system, are still utterly insufficient to form the basis of that great mathematical theory of Saturn which must eventually be written.

But Saturn possesses an interest for a far more numerous class of persons than those who are specially devoted to astronomy. It is of interest, it must be of interest, to every cultivated person who has the slightest love for nature. A