Vilas County news. [volume] (Eagle River, Vilas County, Wis.) 1896-1927, 1900-06-18

The John Hopkins eclipse party has
indicated the success of it's observa-
tons at Pinehurst, n c., and the
results of the Photographic exposures
end observations at Pinehurst and other
places, as made known to reporter OF
the Baltimore Sun, give substantial
evidence OF valuable additions to the
physical knowledge of the sun.
These results contradict positively a
recent statement of Prof. Henry Crew
Of the Northwestern university, whom
the Chicago Inter Ocean quoted as say
ing that the observations of the eclipse
were total failures, that the develop
ment of the plates mas been a series Of
disappointment and the great question
of the composition of the sun, which Ii
was hoped to answer more definitely,
will be but little nearer solution than
ever.
According to the statement the in
struments used were too powerful and
instead of giving valuable results left
blank records. Professor Crew is a
leading scientist Of this country,
formerly connected with the Johns
Hopkins university, and the report
was credited by many learned men.
Prof Joseph S. Ames. director of the
Johns Hopkins party, said that Dr.
Crews statement must lave been 10
correctly reported and that he had
spoken only for his own party at
Griffin, Ca He, of course, knew moth
ing of the results at Other places, and
they were yet undevelored The
failure of the Griffin photographs re-
suits was not due to the instruments,
but to an unfortunate negligence of an
assistant, the conditions for fine
pictures being otherwise perfect.
AS a matter of fact. however, Mr.. L..
E. Jewell, assistant in spcctroscopv ana
photography at the Johns Hopkins uni
versity, who was with Professor Grew,
obtained entirely satisfactory visual
observations, including phenomena net
seen at other places
The plates which bear the precious
records of the Johns Hopkins party
were developed at the university by Mr..
Jewell. They are slips of glass an inch
wide, IL inches long, coated with the
usual gelatine film, showing the spec
trum of the atmosphere surrounding
the sun at the period of totality, as OBJ
tanned with a Rowland spectroscopic
grating. The grating breaks up the
light coming from the region of the
sun into bright or dark lines, and
from these lines the presence and po-
sition of gases in the suns atmosphere
are determined. The images appear
as long series of circles and arcs, with
here and there little dots showing the
prominences.
An important point established by
one picture is to disprove beyond
doubt statement made 10y Prof. H. K.
Lord of the Ohio state university, to
the effect that substances giving the
green coronal line were intimately con-
nected with the prominences. The
picture shows that there ic no Gloss
connection at least with the continuous
spectrum of the corona1 streamers and
the bright lines of the corona, and the
same is true of other coronal lines six
plates.
Again, four strong ultraviolet coro-
nal lines appear which have never been
seen before, one of which seems to
come from a substance having the same
distribution as the green line.
The other three ultraviolet lines have
different distribution and are probably
due to some other substance than that
which produces the green.
The most valuable plate was obtained
by a remarkable exposure which was
stopped just one second before the
totality was over. 1t shows bright
line spectrum all the way from yellow,
including the well-knoWn helium line,
far into the ultraviolet. This plate
was obtained on the Rowland grating
with a quartz lens, which decides con-
clusively the superior brilliancy of the
grating over a prism in many parts Of
the spectrum.
This result is especially noteworthy
as most of the observers along the cen
trail line Of totality found the spectrum
reversing layer either faint or not Wis
ible at ali.
The continuous spectrum Of the in
ner corona, perhaps also the streamers,
seems to have been unusually strong
during this eclipse. This is fully
shown both by the photographs taken
at Pinehurst and also by the higher
visual observations at Griffin, Ca,
where the continuous spectrum seemed
to be particularly strong.
Excellent visual results were Oh
tanned by DR.. Nicholas E. Dorsey OF the
Pinehurst party in the polarization of
the light Of the corona and important
Photographic results obtained by him
in conjunction with Mr.. L. A. Parsons
have been announced. The visual OBJ