Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/305

Rh growth of brilliant faculæ and flocculi in the regions of uprush surrounding the spot,—a theory first suggested by Secchi?

The visible spots are not the sole evidences of circulation. The surface is covered with a network of interstices, or vents between clouds, which probably exercise all the functions of the visible spots, but on a smaller scale.

There is no reason to question the truth of Young's discovery that the Fraunhofer lines originate in the absorption of a reversing layer—a thin stratum of uncondensed vapors lying immediately over and between the photospheric clouds.

The chromospheric stratum, several thousand miles in thickness, includes and extends far above the reversing layers, and contains the lighter gases, such as hydrogen and helium, and the vapors of calcium, sodium, magnesium and other elements which do not condense under existing temperatures.

The prominences have in general the same composition as the chromosphere. In some the lighter gases, and in others the heavier metallic vapors, predominate. They are portions of the chromosphere projected beyond its usual level by the more violent ascending currents, or perhaps by eruptions of a volcanic character; and these forces are almost certainly augmented by the pressure of the sun's radiation. It is difficult to account for the quiescent, cloud-like prominences in regions far above the chromosphere on any supposition other than that they are in equilibrium under the opposing influences of gravity and radiation pressure.

The nature of the forces which control the general and detailed coronal forms is but little understood. Motion within the corona has never been directly observed. Yet we can not question that the component particles are driven outward from the sun, and that many of them probably fall back into the sun, either singly or after combining to form larger masses. It is suggested that out-bound particles may be started on their way by the violent solar circulation, continued on their journey by radiation pressure, and arranged in the characteristic streamers under the influence of magnetic forces.

The light received from the corona is of three kinds:

1. A small quantity of bright-line radiations from a gas overlying the chromosphere. This gas is unknown to terrestrial chemistry, and astronomers provisionally call it coronium. It is distributed very irregularly over the solar sphere, and shows a decided preference for the sun-spot zone.

2. The bright-line radiations from coronium are almost a negligible quantity, in comparison with those from the same regions which form a strictly continuous spectrum, and which seem to be due to the incandescence of minute particles heated by the intense thermal radiations from the sun.