Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/311

Rh to the foregoing are the helium stars. Their absorption lines include the Huggins hydrogen series complete, a score or more of the conspicuous helium lines, frequently a few of the Pickering hydrogen series, and usually some inconspicuous metallic lines. Calcium absorption is absent, or scarcely noticeable. The white stars in Orion and the Pleiades are typical of this age.

The causes which produce bright lines in stars are not thoroughly understood; but atmospheres of higher temperatures than their underlying strata, or very extensive simple atmospheres, seem to be demanded. The former condition, on the large scale required, involves some difficulties, and mildly suggests the possibility that external influences may be acting upon the radiating strata of bright-line stars.

The assignment of the foregoing types to an early place in stellar life was first made upon the evidence of the spectroscope. The photographic discovery of nebulous masses in the regions of a large proportion of the bright-line and helium stars affords extremely strong confirmation of their youth. Who that has seen the nebulous background of Orion, or the remnants of nebulosity in which the individual stars of the Pleiades are immersed, can doubt that the stars in these groups are of recent formation?

With the lapse of time, stellar heat radiates into space; and, so far as the individual star is concerned, is lost. On the other hand, the force of gravity in the surface strata increases. The inevitable contraction in volume is accompanied by increasing average temperature. Changes in the spectrum are the necessary consequence. The second hydrogen series vanishes, the ordinary hydrogen absorption is intensified, the helium lines become indistinct, and calcium and iron absorptions begin to assert themselves. Vega and Sirius are conspicuous examples of this period. Increasing age gradually robs the hydrogen lines of their importance, the H and K lines broaden, the metallic lines develop, the bluish-white color fades in the direction of the yellow, and, after passing through types exemplified by many well-known stars, the solar stage is reached. The reversing layer in solar stars represents but four or five hydrogen absorption lines of moderate intensity; the calcium lines are commandingly prominent; and some 20,000 metallic lines are observable. The solar type seems to lie near the summit of stellar life. The average temperature of the mass must be nearly a maximum, for the low density indicates a constitution that is still gaseous.

Passing time brings a lowering of average temperature. The color passes from yellow to the red, in consequence of lower radiating temperatures and increasing general absorption by the atmosphere. The hydrogen lines become indistinct, metallic absorption remains prominent, and broad absorption bands are introduced. In one type, of which Alpha Herculis is an example, these bands are of unknown