The copper country evening news. [volume] (Calumet, Mich.) 18??-1907, 1898-02-04
A STUDY OF THE SUN.
A FASCINATING RECREATION WHICH
ANY ONE MAY ENJOY.


A Method OF Getting Perfectly Pure |
Beam For Inspection-A Lesson In As |
tronoiny Couched In Simple Terms.
Every day royal presence, attended by
numerous unseen courtiers, sweeps across
the sky The sun looks Us SO boldly i'm the
face that we are compelled TO veil ourselves
from his Accusing gaze Let US commence
our new studies by contemplating his at.
Effectiveness
A piece OF we'll smoked glass will give
as good service III this be covered with
another piece. with strips of paper at the
edges to separate them and prevent rub
bling, and other mucilaged strips to bind
the outer edges, we shall have IA respecta
BILE and lasting astronomical instrument.
The eye may now examine the dazzling
orb without danger and 10 will discover
O disk which is apparently no larger than
that of the full moon, but the fact that
the sun is about 400 times farther away
accounts for the resemblance in size. But
the disk IL not MI Of the immense world,
for very important envelope of vast di.
mansions Is invisible except to special in
struments. The limb of the sun is seen to
be not quite SO bright ms the central por.
tons, because the light from it has to
penetrate greater depth Of atmosphere.
Occasionally we see spot" upon the
solar surface, in which case Ii must be
very large, but If we are fortunate enough
to have access to even small spyglass we
shall many times see spots. There are
years when the spots are very numerous
(the writer counted 1863 one day and more
than 300 on a day in 1889, and years
when none Is seen for months, and this
appears to he governed by period of
about / years.
II we use a telescope with our smoked
glass, the spectacle will DO curiously in
teresting, for the object glass-a very large
eye-gathers many rays of light and bends
them to a focus producing a lnagnified
image which Is yet more enlarged by the
eyepiece, which Is a microscope. Now,
the very grain of the sun, so To speak, Is
visible, the surface being completely flecked
with gray white matter, while here and
there huge masses of white protrude These
latter are called facule and arc usually
associated with the spots which are de-
pressions in the surface deep, dark cavi-
ties, but dark only as contrasted with the
shining regions, for they are brighter than
the calcium light. Very recently the writ
er measured large group and found that
il occupied an area of more than 100. GOO
miles in length and about three-fourths as
wide into which could be cast 100 earths
without crowding them. Still larger
groups have sometimes been noticed
Watching the spots from day to day re-
veals the time of revolution of the sun
upon its axis. about % days, which means
that one day on the sun is as long as 20
Of ours
AS yet the sun has not yielded the secret
| of its composition, and the telescope, un-
| aided. is inadequate TO solve the mystery.
| Perhaps in childhood we beguiled hours
| of church service. which were trifle
( wearisome TO little ones. by noticing the
| play of color in the 'lusters' which hung
| in profusion from the old fashioned lamps.
| How little we dreamed that the sun was
] whispering through this simple medium
| ineligible messages of very high impor-
! lance, for this three faced form OF glass Is
| called a prism. the change of direction OF
objects viewed through it being due to the
| bending (refraction) of the rays of light
/ passing through it. and the color fringe
! along the edges Of the images the primary
rays of which white light is composed
| which is easily proved 10y passing the col
4
they form beam of white light once
more.
| The same color band, or spectrum, II
shown by a grating OF parallel wire:
| strung in frame, or by a close grained
feather, or even by the eyelashes when the
| eye is half closed
But we can easily improve upon these
| primitive Instruments by employing
series of prisms of fine construction or I
grating produced by ruling lines with
diamond upon piece of perfectly fiat anG
highly polished spectrum metal.
To get perfectly pure beam for inspec
ton we let the telescope image of the SUI
fall upon delicate slit in metal plate
which Is In the focus of the object glass o
little telescope, whose duty 1t Is to maxi
parallel the rays to be examined, ant
which sends them through the series o
prisms referred to or causes them to fal
upon q grating. In either case they ar
viewed by another little telescope and tn
! beam of sunlight tells its story in mag
nificent spectrum, far exceeding the rares
touches Of world renowned artists.
Now for tho precious secretl The beau
tiful color band Is threaded with thousand
of slender dark lines, which correspond
with tho bright lines. which are the sigI
manual of metals in glowing state, AM
we need only to put pinch of salt In tn
flame of candle and let tho light fal
alongside the suns image on the slit
when there will be two spectra, side D.
side, and the two bright yellow lines
sodium will exactly coincide with tw
black lines in the orange of the solar spec
trum, and the browning proof appear
when the calcium light is permitted {
shine through the candle flame, instantl
turning the bright lines to dark ones. >
with the lines of other metals. We hav
learned from the suns own messages, aft
er a journey of 93, 600, 900 miles, that 1T !
q gaseous body; that many of the metal
of earth are vaporized in its awful tenn
perature, and that the surface Is probabl
a shell of luminous clouds surrounded o.
an "atmosphere' of gases thousands Q
miles deep, out of which squirt for hun
dreds of thousands Of miles, with spec
in contrast with which the movement Q
whirlwinds on earth Is dead calm, jets Q
flaming hydrogen intermingled with tn
metallic vapors, which, becoming coole
by exposure to the cold of space, fall upo