Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 60.djvu/311

Rh devote a very small amount of time to the subject. As you doubtless know, the essential feature of a star spectroscope is the prism or train of prisms by which the star light is divided into its constituent parts. After passing through the prisms the light of the star is spread out into a long band, which shows all the colors of the rainbow, beginning

with red at one end and passing through orange, yellow, green and blue, to violet at the other. This band is crossed by lines, and the problem of the spectroscopist is to interpret the meaning of these lines. If the lines are dark he knows that the light of the star after