Contributions to Solar Physics: I. A Popular Account of Inquiries Into the Physical Constitution of the Sun, with Special Reference to Recent Spectroscopic Researches; II. Communications to the Royal Society of London, and the French Academy of Sciences, with Notes

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Macmillan and Company, 1874 - 676 pages
 

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Page 102 - Yet still, from time to time, vague and forlorn, From the soul's subterranean depth upborne As from an infinitely distant land, Come airs, and floating echoes, and convey A melancholy into all our day.
Page 211 - I am purposing them, to be considered of and examined, an account of a philosophical discovery which induced me to the making of the said telescope ; and I doubt not but will prove much more grateful than the communication of that instrument ; being in my judgment the oddest, if not the most considerable detection which hath hitherto been made in the operations of nature.
Page 147 - The position of the prism in which the colours are most clearly divided is when the incident light makes about equal angles with two of its sides. I then found that the spaces AB, BC, CD, DE, occupied by them, were nearly as the numbers 16, 23, 36, 25.
Page 189 - ... of those fundamental modes, if some of the incident light is of one or other of their periods, or some of one and some of the other ; so that the energy of the waves of those particular qualities of light is converted into thermal vibrations of the medium and dispersed in all directions, while light of all other qualities, even though very nearly agreeing with them, is transmitted with comparatively no loss. (5) That...
Page 443 - ... red flames" which total eclipses have revealed to us in the sun's atmosphere, although they escape all other methods of observation at other times?
Page 147 - The line A that bounds the red side of the spectrum is somewhat confused, which seems in part owing to want of power in the eye to converge red light. The line B, between red and green, in a certain position of the prism, is perfectly distinct; so also are D and E, the two limits of violet. But C, the limit of green and blue, is not so clearly marked as the rest ; and there are also, on each side of this limit, other distinct dark lines, / and g, either of which, in an imperfect experiment, might...
Page 527 - ... we were in a position to determine the atmospheric pressure operating in a prominence in which the red and green lines are nearly of equal width, and in the chromosphere, through which the green line gradually expands as the sun is approached. With regard to the higher prominences, we have...
Page 400 - But in the meanwhile the little " thunderhead " before alluded to had grown and developed wonderfully into a mass of rolling and everchanging flame, to speak according to appearances. First it was crowded down, as it were, along the solar surface ; later it rose almost pyramidally...
Page 226 - ... 5", or about 27,000 miles. I left the Observatory for a few minutes, and on returning, at llh. 15m. I was astonished to find that the straight part of the prominence had entirely disappeared ; not even the slightest rack appeared in its place. Whether it was entirely dissipated, or whether parts of it had been wafted towards the other part, I do not know, although I think the latter explanation the more probable one, as the other part had increased.
Page 559 - ... greatest. The heat required to act upon such a compound as a salt of calcium so as to render its spectrum visible, dissociates the compound according to its volatility ; the number of true metallic lines which thus appear is a measure of the quantity of the metal resulting from the dissociation, and as the metal lines increase in number, the compound bands thin out.

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