Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/184

180 Recent advances in methods of research have also made possible the study of various other phenomena, in addition to the variability in brightness. All available information will be needed to assist us in finding the true explanation of the changes. Especially must we study the spectra of these stars, and the changes in the spectra at different phases of the light-curve, as well as the motions of the stars in the line of sight. For a long time it has been known that the radial motion of any bright body may be studied from the shifting positions of the spectral lines. This principle is proving of great importance in different branches of astronomy. Only recently, however, and in few cases has this crucial method been applied to the problem of variable stars; yet it appears that the true solution of the difficulties must await, in many cases, the application of this method of research.

The determination of these different phenomena—the light-curve, the velocity-curve and the spectrum—is often carried on without special reference to the physical causes which produce them. But it

will be convenient in what follows to refer to the phenomena and the probable causes together. No final classification of variable stars is possible at the present time, since such a classification would doubtless be based on the physical causes which underlyunderlie [sic] the phenomena, and these are known in comparatively few cases. The division proposed by Professor Pickering, in 1881, is as convenient as any for our purposes. He placed them all in the following classes:

 I. New stars. II. Long-period variables, undergoing great variations in light. III. Stars undergoing slight changes, according to laws as yet little understood. IV. Short-period variables of the β Lyræ type. V. Algol stars.