The Sun: Ruler, Fire, Light, and Life of the Planetary System |
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Common terms and phrases
angle aperture aphelion appear astronomers battery of prisms body bright lines cause centre chromosphere clouds coloured consider corona corresponding dark lines deduced diameter direction Earth eclipse effect error estimate fact faculę Fraunhofer greater Halley's method heat Herschel Hipparchus hydrogen Kepler's third law Kirchhoff length less light-waves limb luminous Mars mass matter mean distance measure miles per second minute Moon Moon's motion noticed observations orbit pass path peculiarity penumbra perihelion phenomena photosphere planets polariscopic portion present problem prominences proportion rays recognised red end regarded remarkable rendered researches respecting rotation Secchi seen shown slit sodium solar light solar parallax solar physics solar prominences solar spectrum solar spots source of light space spec spectra spectroscopic analysis star stations Sun can control Sun-spots Sun's disc Sun's distance Sun's surface supposed telescope terrestrial tion transit transits of Venus trum vapours velocity Venus violet end visible
Popular passages
Page 405 - I have seen the wild stone-avalanches of the Alps, which smoke and thunder down the declivities with a vehemence almost sufficient to stun the observer. I have also seen snow-flakes descending so softly as not to hurt the fragile spangles of which they were composed ; yet to produce from aqueous vapour a quantity, which a child could carry, of that tender material, demands an exertion of energy competent to gather up the shattered blocks of the largest stone-avalanche I have ever seen, and pitch...
Page 183 - Hence he concludes that the sun has a very extensive atmosphere, which consists of elastic fluids that are more or less lucid and transparent ; and of which the lucid ones furnish us with light. This atmosphere, he...
Page 117 - I obtained a tolerably bright solar spectrum, and brought a flame coloured by sodium vapour in front of the slit. I then saw the dark lines D change into bright ones.
Page 393 - The sun's rays are the ultimate source of almost every motion which takes place on the surface of the earth. By its heat are produced all winds, and those disturbances in the electric equilibrium of the atmosphere which give rise to the phenomena of lightning, and probably also to those of terrestrial magnetism and the aurora.
Page 193 - The spots, in this view of the subject, would come to be assimilated to those regions in the earth's surface, in which for the moment hurricanes and tornadoes prevail...
Page 412 - And still, notwithstanding this enormous drain in the lapse of human history, we are unable to detect a diminution of his store. Measured by our largest terrestrial standards, such a reservoir of power is infinite ; but it is our privilege to rise above these standards, and to regard the sun himself as a speck in infinite extension — a mere drop in the universal sea. We analyse the space in which he is immersed, and which is the vehicle of his power.
Page 411 - Still, presented rightly to the mind, the discoveries and generalisations of modern science constitute a poem more sublime than has ever yet been addressed to the imagination. The natural philosopher of to-day may dwell amid conceptions which beggar those of Milton.
Page 394 - ... of those great deposits of dynamical efficiency which are laid up for human use in our coal strata.* By them the waters of the sea are made to circulate in vapour through the air, and irrigate the land, producing springs and rivers. By them are produced all disturbances of the chemical equilibrium of the elements of nature, which by a series of compositions and decompositions give rise to new products, and originate a transfer of materials.
Page 413 - ... melt in air, — the flux of power is eternally the same. It rolls in music through the age^s, and all terrestrial energy, — the manifestations of life as well as the display of phenomena, are but the modulations of its rhythm.
Page 207 - By degrees, accounts began to pour in of great Auroras seen on the nights of those days ; not only in these latitudes, but at Rome ; in the West Indies ; on the tropics within 18° of the equator (where they hardly ever appear), nay, what is still more striking, in South America and in Australia ; where, at Melbourne, on the night of the 2d of September the greatest Aurora ever seen there made its appearance.