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386 in addition spots were seen to have also independent "proper motions." Carrington also established (1858) the scarcity of spots in the immediate neighbourhood of the equator, and confirmed statistically their prevalence in the adjacent regions, and their great scarcity more than about 35° from the equator; and noticed further certain regular changes in the distribution of spots on the sun in the course of the 11-year cycle.

Wilson's theory (chapter, § 268) that spots are depressions was confirmed by an extensive series of photographs taken at Kew in 1858–72, shewing a large preponderance of cases of the perspective effect noticed by him; but, on the other hand, Mr. F. Howlett, who has watched the sun for some 35 years and made several thousand drawings of spots, considers (1894) that his observations are decidedly against Wilson's theory. Other observers are divided in opinion.

299. Spectrum analysis, which has played such an important part in recent astronomical work, is essentially a method of ascertaining the nature of a body by a process of sifting or analysing into different components the light received from it.

It was first clearly established by Newton, in 1665–66 (chapter, § 168), that ordinary white light, such as sunlight, is composite, and that by passing a beam of sunlight—with proper precautions—through a glass prism it can be decomposed into light of different colours; if the beam so decomposed is received on a screen, it produces a band of colours known as a spectrum, red being at one end and violet at the other.

Now according to modern theories light consists essentially of a series of disturbances or waves transmitted at extremely short but regular intervals from the luminous object to the eye, the medium through which the disturbances travel being called ether. The most important characteristic distinguishing different kinds of light is the interval of time or space between one wave and the next, which is generally expressed by means of wave-length, or the distance between any point of one wave and the corresponding point of the next. Differences in wave-length shew themselves most readily as differences of colour; so