Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 20.djvu/208

196 from the earth, just as a steam-whistle is raised or lowered as it approaches or recedes from us. Every one has observed that if a train whistles as it passes us, the sound appears to alter at the moment the engine goes by. This arises, of course, not from any change in the whistle itself, but because the number of vibrations which reach the ear in a given time are increased by the speed of the train as it approaches, and diminished as it recedes. So, like the sound, the color would be affected by such a movement; but Döppler's method was practically inapplicable, because the amount of effect on the color would be utterly insensible; and even if it were otherwise, the method could not be applied, because, as we did not know the true color of the stars, we have no datum-line by which to measure.

A change of refrangibility of light, however, does occur in consequence of relative motion, and Huggins successfully applied the spectroscope to solve the problem. He took in the first place the spectroscope of Sirius, and chose a line known as F, which is due to hydrogen. Now, if Sirius was motionless, or rather if it retained a constant distance from the earth, the line F would occupy exactly the same position in the spectrum of Sirius as in that of the sun. On the contrary, if Sirius were approaching or receding from us, this line would be slightly shifted either toward the blue or red end of the spectrum. He found that the line had moved very slightly toward the red, indicating that the distance between us and Sirius is increasing at the rate of about twenty miles a second. So also Betelgeux, Rigel, Castor, and Regulus are increasing their distance; while, on the contrary, that of others, as for instance of Vega, Arcturus, and Pollux, is diminishing. The results obtained by Huggins on about twenty stars have since been confirmed and extended by Mr. Christie, now Astronomer-Royal in succession to Sir G. Airy, who has long occupied the post with so much honor to himself and advantage to science.

To examine the spectrum of a shooting-star would seem even more difficult; yet Alexander Herschel has succeeded in doing so, and finds that their nuclei are incandescent solid bodies; he has recognized the lines of potassium, sodium, lithium, and other substances, and considers that the shooting-stars are bodies similar in character and composition to the stony masses which sometimes reach the earth as aërolites.

Some light has also been thrown upon those mysterious visitants, the comets. The researches of Professor Newton on the periods of meteoroids led to the remarkable discovery by Schiaparelli of the identity of the orbits of some meteor-swarms with those of some comets. The similarity of orbits is too striking to be the result of chance, and shows a true cosmical relation between the bodies. Comets, in fact, are in some cases at any rate groups of meteoric stones. From the spectra of the small comets of 1866 and 1868, Huggins showed that part of their light is emitted by themselves, and reveals the presence