Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/779

Rh Crawford, on the Andes. Professor Langley says, "I have tried visual methods under the most favorable circumstances, but with entire non-success." Dr. Copeland observed at Puno, at a height of 12,040 feet. He says, "It ought to be mentioned that the appearances produced by the illuminated atmosphere were often of the most tantalizing description, giving again and again the impression that my efforts were about to be crowned with success."

There are occasions on which the existence of the brighter part of the corona near the sun's limb can be detected without an eclipse. The brightness of the sky near the sun's limb is due to two distinct factors, the air-glare and the corona behind it, which M. Janssen considers to be brighter than the full moon. When Venus comes between us and the sun, it is obvious that the planet, as it approaches the sun, comes in before the corona, and shuts off the light which is due to it. To the observer the sky at the place where the planet is appears darker than the adjoining parts, that is to say, the withdrawal of the coronal light from behind has made a sensible diminution in the brightness of the sky. It follows that the part of the sky behind which the corona is situated must be brighter in a small degree than the adjoining parts, and it would perhaps not be too much to say that the corona would always be visible when the sky is clear, if our eyes were more sensitive to small differences of illumination of adjacent areas. My friend Mr. John Brett, A. R. A., tells me that he is able to see the corona in a telescope of low power.

The spectroscopic method by which the prominences can be seen fails because a part only of the coronal light is resolved by the prism into bright lines, and of these lines no one is sufficiently bright and co-extensive with the corona to enable us to see the corona by its light, as the prominences may be seen by the red, the blue, or the green line of hydrogen.

The corona sends to us light of three kinds: 1. Light which the prism resolves into bright lines, which has been emitted by luminous gas. 2. Light which gives a continuous spectrum, which has come from incandescent liquid or solid matter. 3. Reflected sunlight, which M. Janssen considers to form the fundamental part of the coronal light.

The problem to be solved was how to disentangle the coronal light from the air-glare mixed up with it, or in other words how to give such an advantage to the coronal light that it might hold its own sufficiently for our eyes to distinguish the corona from the bright sky.

When the report reached this country in the summer of 1882 that photographs of the spectrum of the corona taken during the eclipse in Egypt showed that the coronal light seen from the earth as a whole is strong in the violet region, it seemed to me probable that if by some method of selective absorption this kind of light were isolated, then when viewed by this kind of light alone the corona might be at a sufficient advantage relatively to the air-glare to become visible. Though