The Story of the Heavens - Sir Robert Stawell Ball (ebook reader for laptop .TXT) 📗

constellation an astonishing sight is witnessed. A hundred stars can now be seen with the greatest ease.

But the opera-glass will not show nearly all the stars in this region. Any good telescope will reveal many hundreds too faint for the feebler instrument. The greater the telescope the more numerous the stars: so that seen through one of the colossal instruments the number would have to be reckoned in thousands.

We have chosen the Great Bear because it is more generally known than any other constellation. But the Great Bear is not exceptionally rich in stars. To tell the number of the stars is a task which no man has accomplished; but various estimates have been made. Our great telescopes can probably show at least 50,000,000 stars.

The student who uses a good refracting telescope, having an object-glass not less than three inches in diameter, will find occupation for many a fine evening. It will greatly increase the interest of his work if he have the charming handbook of the heavens known as Webb's "Celestial Objects for Common Telescopes."


CHAPTER II.


THE SUN.

The vast Size of the Sun--Hotter than Melting Platinum--Is the Sun
the Source of Heat for the Earth?--The Sun is 92,900,000 miles
distant--How to realise the magnitude of this distance--Day and
Night--Luminous and Non-Luminous Bodies--Contrast between the Sun
and the Stars--The Sun a Star--Granulated Appearance of the
Sun--The Spots on the Sun--Changes in the Form of a Spot--The
Faculae--The Rotation of the Sun on its Axis--View of a Typical
Sun-Spot--Periodicity of the Sun-Spots--Connection between the
Sun-Spots and Terrestrial Magnetism--Principles of Spectrum
Analysis--Substances present in the Sun--Spectrum of a Spot--The
Prominences surrounding the Sun--Total Eclipse of the Sun--Size and
Movement of the Prominences--Their connection with the
Spots--Spectroscopic Measurement of Motion on the Sun--The Corona
surrounding the Sun--Constitution of the Sun.

In commencing our examination of the orbs which surround us, we naturally begin with our peerless sun. His splendid brilliance gives him the pre-eminence over all other celestial bodies.

The dimensions of our luminary are commensurate with his importance. Astronomers have succeeded in the difficult task of ascertaining the exact figures, but they are so gigantic that the results are hard to realise. The diameter of the orb of day, or the length of the axis, passing through the centre from one side to the other, is 866,000 miles. Yet this bare statement of the dimensions of the great globe fails to convey an adequate idea of its vastness. If a railway were laid round the sun, and if we were to start in an express train moving sixty miles an hour, we should have to travel for five years without intermission night or day before we had accomplished the journey.

When the sun is compared with the earth the bulk of our luminary becomes still more striking. Suppose his globe were cut up into one million parts, each of these parts would appreciably exceed the bulk of our earth. Fig. 10 exhibits a large circle and a very small one, marked S and E respectively. These circles show the comparative sizes of the two bodies. The mass of the sun does not, however, exceed that of the earth in the same proportion. Were the sun placed in one pan of a mighty weighing balance, and were 300,000 bodies as heavy as our earth placed in the other, the luminary would turn the scale.

The sun has a temperature far surpassing any that we artificially produce, either in our chemical laboratories or our metallurgical establishments. We can send a galvanic current through a piece of platinum wire. The wire first becomes red hot, then white hot; then it glows with a brilliance almost dazzling until it fuses and breaks. The temperature of the melting platinum wire could hardly be surpassed in the most elaborate furnaces, but it does not attain the temperature of the sun.

It must, however, be admitted that there is an apparent discrepancy between a fact of common experience and the statement that the sun possesses the extremely high temperature that we have just tried to illustrate. "If the sun were hot," it has been said, "then the nearer we approach to him the hotter we should feel; yet this does not seem to be the case. On the top of a high mountain we are nearer to the sun, and yet everybody knows that it is much colder up there than in the valley beneath. If the mountain be as high as Mont Blanc, then we are certainly two or three miles nearer the glowing globe than we were at the sea-level; yet, instead of additional warmth, we find eternal snow." A simple illustration may help to lessen this difficulty. In a greenhouse on a sunshiny day the temperature is much hotter than it is outside. The glass will permit the hot sunbeams to enter, but it refuses to allow them out again with equal freedom, and consequently the temperature rises. The earth may, from this point of view, be likened to a greenhouse, only, instead of the panes of glass, our globe is enveloped by an enormous coating of air. On the earth's surface, we stand, as it were, inside the greenhouse, and we benefit by the interposition of the atmosphere; but when we climb very high mountains, we gradually pass through some of the protecting medium, and then we suffer from the cold. If the earth were deprived of its coat of air, it seems certain that eternal frost would reign over whole continents as well as on the tops of the mountains.

The actual distance of the sun from the earth is about 92,900,000 miles; but by merely reciting the figures we do not receive a vivid impression of the real magnitude. It would be necessary to count as quickly as possible for three days and three nights before one million was completed; yet this would have to be repeated nearly ninety-three times before we had counted all the miles between the earth and the sun.

Every clear night we see a vast host of stars scattered over the sky. Some are bright, some are faint, some are grouped into remarkable forms. With regard to this multitude of brilliant points we have now to ask an important question. Are they bodies which shine by their own light like the sun, or do they only shine with borrowed light like the moon? The answer is easily stated. Most of those bodies shine by their own light, and they are properly called _stars_.

Suppose that the sun and the multitude of stars, properly so called, are each and all self-luminous brilliant bodies, what is the great distinction between the sun and the stars? There is, of course, a vast and obvious difference between the unrivalled splendour of the sun and the feeble twinkle of the stars. Yet this distinction does not necessarily indicate that our luminary has an intrinsic splendour superior to that of the stars. The fact is that we are nestled up comparatively close to the sun for the benefit of his warmth and light, while we are separated from even the nearest of the stars by a mighty abyss. If the sun were gradually to retreat from the earth, his light would decrease, so that when he had penetrated the depths of space to a distance comparable with that by which we are separated from the stars, his glory would have utterly departed. No longer would the sun seem to be the majestic orb with which we are familiar. No longer would he be a source of genial heat, or a luminary to dispel the darkness of night. Our great sun would have shrunk to the insignificance of a star, not so bright as many of those which we see every night.

Momentous indeed is the conclusion to which we are now led. That myriad host of stars which studs our sky every night has been elevated into vast importance. Each one of those stars is itself a mighty sun, actually rivalling, and in many cases surpassing, the splendour of our own luminary. We thus open up a majestic conception of the vast dimensions of space, and of the dignity and splendour of the myriad globes by which that space is tenanted.

There is another aspect of the picture not without its utility. We must from henceforth remember that our sun is only a star, and not a particularly important star. If the sun and the earth, and all which it contains, were to vanish, the effect in the universe would merely be that a tiny star had ceased its twinkling. Viewed simply as a star, the sun must retire to a position of insignificance in the mighty fabric of the universe. But it is not as a star that we have to deal with the sun. To us his comparative proximity gives him an importance incalculably transcending that of all the other stars. We imagined ourselves to be withdrawn from the sun to obtain his true perspective in the universe; let us now draw near, and give him that attention which his supreme importance to us merits.

To the unaided eye the sun appears to be a flat circle. If, however, it be examined with the telescope, taking care of course to interpose a piece of dark-coloured glass, or to employ some similar precaution to screen the eye from injury, it will then be perceived that the sun is not a flat surface, but a veritable glowing globe.

The first question which we must attempt to answer enquires whether the glowing matter which forms the globe is a solid mass, or, if not solid, which is it, liquid or gaseous? At the first glance we might think that the sun cannot be fluid, and we might naturally imagine that it was a solid ball of some white-hot substance. But this view is not correct; for we can show that the sun is certainly not a solid body in so far at least as its superficial parts are concerned.

A general view of the sun as shown by a telescope of moderate dimensions may be seen in Fig. 11, which is taken from a photograph obtained by Mr. Rutherford at New York on the 22nd of September, 1870. It is at once seen that the surface of the luminary is by no means of uniform texture or brightness. It may rather be described as granulated or mottled. This appearance is due to the luminous clouds which float suspended in a somewhat less luminous layer of gas. It is needless to say that these solar clouds are very different from the clouds which we know so well in our own atmosphere. Terrestrial clouds are, of course, formed from minute drops of water, while the clouds at the surface of the sun are composed of drops of one or more chemical elements at an exceedingly high temperature.

The granulated appearance of the solar surface is beautifully shown in the remarkable photographs on a large scale which M. Janssen, of Meudon, has succeeded in obtaining during the last twenty years. We are enabled to reproduce one of them in Fig. 12. It will be observed that the interstices between the luminous dots are of a greyish tint, the general effect (as remarked by Professor Young) being much like that of rough drawing paper seen from a little distance. We often notice places over the surface of such a plate where the definition seems to be unsatisfactory. These are not, however, the blemishes that might at first be supposed. They arise neither from casual imperfections of the photographic plate nor from accidents during the development; they plainly owe their origin to some veritable