Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/223

Rh up in sidereal astronomy. The process of elimination requires the mathematician to calculate the direction and velocity of the motion of the sun which will leave behind it the smallest unexplained residuum; and this remainder is the motion of the stars themselves. The delicacy of the problem lies in the minuteness of the quantities to be observed, and in the assumptions which must be made in regard to the distances of the stars, only a few of which have been positively computed from parallax. However, a result has been reached, highly probable in the sun's case, but which can be converted into absolute values for other stars only so fast as their individual distances are discovered. Here, again, physics and chemistry, with the spectroscope in hand, have come to the aid of astronomy and geometry. Should it appear that the conclusions from spectrum analysis must be questioned, the attempt was brave, and even a defeat would be honorable.

In 1675 a Danish astronomer observed the novel fact that the frequency in the eclipses of Jupiter's satellites fluctuated with the motion of 'the planet to or from the earth. He hit upon a happy explanation, viz., that the swift light takes more or less time to telegraph the astronomical news across the omnipresent lines of force. This early observation is the avant-coureur of a host of others which have slowly followed in close array. That of a blind musician comes next. He noticed, in 1835, that the pitch of a steam-whistle, on the Lowell Railroad, fell suddenly as the locomotive passed him. Unfortunately, Munroe's observation was never published, although he sought and found an explanation of what was then a strange fact. In this case, the whistle sends the message, the waves of sound transmit it, and the ear is the register; but the changing distance modifies the time. In 1842, Doppler, of Prague, was led, by theoretical considerations, to formulate the proposition, now known in science as Doppler's principle: that the color of light and the pitch of sound, as they tell upon the senses, are changed by the relative velocity of the observer and the origin of the disturbance. In 1845, Buy Ballot made experiments upon the railroads in the Netherlands, and Scott Russell repeated them on English railroads, which confirmed the theory in the case of sound. In the application of the theory to color, few astronomers will be willing to follow Doppler in all his extravagances.

If it be true, theoretically, that the relative velocity of light, the wave-length of transmission, and the period of oscillation in the ether, are altered by the relative motion of the observer and the place from which the undulation starts, it is obvious that all other velocities have but a small chance in competition with the velocity of light, and that slight changes of color, if physically real as Doppler supposed, would fail of being recognized even by the eye of a painter. To interpose the spectroscope, and observe the change of refrangibility by the displacement of the sharp lines of the spectrum, was a lucky escape from this embarrassment. After Huggins had tried his hand at this new