Omaha daily bee., 1895-12-15

work in ord r to get means for my expert
ments; and as | look back on 1t, Il think
| may claim that | did tolerably well in q
business way, for a man chiefly versed il
scientific affairs, for first and last | thus got
for my little observatory over $50, 900. This
| made out of nothing, as it were. and this
all went into books and into the means fol-
scientific research
SUN OFTEN BEHIND TIME.
1.-THE observatory clock was regulated by
the sun, was it not?
Yes" replied Mr.. Langley. "By the sun
and the fixed stars. You cannot work by the
sun alone. 1t is by no means a regular
body, as many people suppose. You would
not give anything for a watch which should
be as irregular as the sun. The sun is SONS
times fifteen minutes out of the way at
noon, sometimes ahead and sometimes be-
hind time, and 1t is only by averaging its
Irregularities that we know whera to find it. "
Your studies have been largely devoted to
the sun, Mr.. Langley. What is the sun,
anyhow p
THAT question is a good deal easier to
ask than to answer" was the reply. II
have spent years in watching 1t and trying
to learn something about it. l have dis
covered some things, but | should have to
know a great deal more before l could ade-
quately answer that question. | spent three
years in the study of the spots on the sun
before / was ready to make any announce
ments concerning them, and during the
waking hours of those three years the suns
face was almost constantly before me. Have
you ever looked at it in a telescope? Do
you appreciate what watching the sun is?
In the first place, the face of the sun in a
telescope is almost always quivering. Our
atmosphere makes 1t seem to move to and
fro In waves, and looking at it is like looking
at a nickering candle, so that II its surface
were ever so near 1t would be hard TO make
out the details. But then 1t is, of course,
rpa1lU an annrnnng WaV off gn that fhpSn
details are also lost from its remoteness.'
Can you give me an idea how far off il
is?"
II have tried in one of my popular writ
fngs to do that by a borrowed illustration, -
replied Mr.. Langley. Fer ms ance, you
touch your finger to a candle, and in a frac-
ton of a second your brain announces the
pain. This sensation has Travelled along the
nerve to the brain almost instantan5ously, but
the speed has been measured, Suppose you
had an arm which would reach from the earth
10 the sun, and you could put the tips of your
fingers on that glowing mass CT fire. 1t
would be a little more than one hundred
years Gf you could live so long, before you
could know that your fingers were being
burned. We'll, the rays Of the sun have to
come all that distance before they reach you,
and the last miles of their journey are through
waves Of heated air, which makes the sun
seem TO flicker so, while beyond and behind
all this almost all its b~rightes, surface is
in real actual notion shifting mere ana thers
with a velocity many hundred times that of
a cannon ball. These real changes may last
for a second or a minute, and sps cial phe-
nomena may occur in the twinkling Of an
eye. In my studie9 Of the sun spots | had
to have a paper and pencil before me as ]
looked through tbs telescope to record thase
changes as they went on, in order TO catch
their varying expressions on the suns face.
II cannot describs to you the wonders
which are going on thsre. / found, how
must learn something more than the mechan-
these studies went on, | learned to draw and
paint sufficiently well to make my records.
Since then | have drawn hundreds of sun
spots, and the works which | have pub
lIshed have been illustrated with my own
d awnings of them"
LOOK AT A SUN SPOT,
At this point in the conversation secre-
tary Langley had one of these former draw
ings Cf a sun spot laid upon the table. II
was, in fact. a beautiful painting about l2xtl
inches in size, Of what seemed to be a snowy
with a large black area in the mid
die. crossed by strange lines OF light, blend
ing in fantastic outlines like the frost figures
On a pane Of glass.
That" said he. lis a spot which ] saw in
IL remained about twenty minutes I'm
the field of the telescope, and 1t looks JUS.
as | saw 1t. You notica all around 1t is white.
The sun does not look like a ball Of fire when
you see II in the telescope. II appears more
frozen than hot. II looks much like the
molten white iron in a great pudding fur
nacS. You cannot see its beauty in the