Astronomy for amateurs (1904) (14760830806)

Identifier: astronomyforamat00flam (find matches)

Title: Astronomy for amateurs

Year: 1904 (1900s)

Authors: Flammarion, Camille, 1842-1925 Welby, Frances A. (Frances Alice) tr

Subjects: Astronomy

Publisher: New York, D. Appleton and company

Contributing Library: The Library of Congress

Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

Text Appearing Before Image:

ions, immense jets of flame,geysers of fire, projected at a terrific speed to prodig-ious heights. For years astronomers were greatly perplexed as tothe nature of these incandescent masses, known asprominences, which shot out like fireworks, and wereonly visible during the total eclipses of the Sun. Butnow, thanks to an ingenious invention of Janssen andLockyer, these eruptions can be observed every dayin the spectroscope, and have been registered since1868, more particularly in Rome and in Catania, wherethe Society of Spectroscopists was founded with thisespecial object, and publishes monthly bulletins instatistics of the health of the Sun. These prominences assume all imaginable forms, andoften resemble our own storm-clouds; they rise abovethe chromosphere with incredible velocity, often ex- 102 OUR STAR THE SUN ceeding 200 kilometers (124 miles) per second, and arecarried up to the amazing height of 300,000 kilometers(186,000 miles). The Sun is surrounded with these enormous flames

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^#iMMfii Fig. 31.—Rose-colored solar flames 228,000 kilometers (141,-500 miles) in height, /. e., iS times the diameter of the Earth. on every side; sometimes they shoot out into spacelike splendid curving roseate plumes; at others theyrear their luminous heads in the Heavens, like the 103 ASTRONOMY FOR AMATEURS cleft and waving leaves of giant palm-trees. Havingillustrated a remarkable type of solar spot, it is interest-ing to submit to the reader a precise observation ofthese curious solar flames. That reproduced here wasobserved in Rome, January 30, 1885, It measured228,000 kilometers (141,500 miles) in height, eighteentimes the diameter of the earth (represented alongsidein its relative magnitude). (Fig. 31.) Solar eruptions have been seen to reach, in a fewminutes, a height of more than 100,000 kilometers(62,000 miles), and then to fall back in a flaming torrentinto that burning and inextinguishable ocean. Observation, in conjunction with spectral analysis,shows these prominenc

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1904

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