A Text-Book of Astronomy Part 15

In a steam engine coal is burned under the boiler, and its chemical energy, transformed into heat, is taken up by the water and delivered, through steam as a medium, to the engine, which again transforms and gives it out as mechanical work in the turning of shafts, the driving of machinery, etc. Now, the function of the sun is exactly opposite to that of the engine and boiler: it gives out, instead of receiving, radiant energy; but, like the engine, it must be fed from some source; it can not be run upon nothing at all any more than the engine can run day after day without fresh supplies of fuel under its boiler. We know that for some thousands of years the sun has been furnishing light and heat to the earth in practically unvarying amount, and not to the earth alone, but it has been pouring forth these forms of energy in every direction, without apparent regard to either use or economy. Of all the radiant energy given off by the sun, only two parts out of every thousand million fall upon any planet of the solar system, and of this small fraction the earth takes about one tenth for the maintenance of its varied forms of life and action. Astronomers and physicists have sought on every hand for an explanation of the means by which this tremendous output of energy is maintained century after century without sensible diminution, and have come with almost one mind to the conclusion that the gravitative forces which reside in the sun's own ma.s.s furnish the only adequate explanation for it, although they may be in some small measure re-enforced by minor influences, such as the fall of meteoric dust and stones into the sun.

Every boy who has inflated a bicycle tire with a hand pump knows that the pump grows warm during the operation, on account of the compression of the air within the cylinder. A part of the muscular force (energy) expended in working the pump reappears in the heat which warms both air and pump, and a similar process is forever going on in the sun, only in place of muscular force we must there subst.i.tute the tremendous attraction of gravitation, 28 times as great as upon the earth. "The matter in the interior of the sun must be as a shuttlec.o.c.k between the stupendous pressure and the enormously high temperature," the one tending to compress and the other to expand it, but with this important difference between them: the temperature steadily tends to fall as the heat energy is wasted away, while the gravitative force suffers no corresponding diminution, and in the long run must gain the upper hand, causing the sun to shrink and become more dense. It is this progressive shrinking and compression of its molecules into a smaller s.p.a.ce which supplies the energy contained in the sun's output of light and heat.

According to Lord Kelvin, each centimeter of shrinkage in the sun's diameter furnishes the energy required to keep up its radiation for something more than an hour, and, on account of the sun's great distance, the shrinkage might go on at this rate for many centuries without producing any measurable effect in the sun's appearance.

127. GASEOUS CONSt.i.tUTION OF THE SUN.--But Helmholtz's dynamical theory of the maintenance of the sun's heat, which we are here considering, includes one essential feature that is not sufficiently stated above. In order that the explanation may hold true, it is necessary that the sun should be in the main a gaseous body, composed from center to circ.u.mference of gases instead of solid or liquid parts. Pumping air warms the bicycle pump in a way that pumping water or oil will not.

The high temperature of the sun itself furnishes sufficient reason for supposing the solar material to be in the gaseous state, but the gas composing those parts of the sun below the photosphere must be very different in some of its characteristics from the air or other gases with which we are familiar at the earth, since its average density is 1,000 times as great as that of air, and its consistence and mechanical behavior must be more like that of honey or tar than that of any gas with which we are familiar. It is worth noting, however, that if a hole were dug into the crust of the earth to a depth of 15 or 20 miles the air at the bottom of the hole would be compressed by that above it to a density comparable with that of the solar gases.

128. THE SUN'S CIRCULATION.--It is plain that under the conditions which exist in the sun the outer portions, which can radiate their heat freely into s.p.a.ce, must be cooler than the inner central parts, and this difference of temperature must set up currents of hot matter drifting upward and outward from within the sun and counter currents of cooler matter settling down to take its place. So, too, there must be some level at which the free radiation into outer s.p.a.ce chills the hot matter sufficiently to condense its less refractory gases into clouds made up of liquid drops, just as on a cloudy day there is a level in our own atmosphere at which the vapor of water condenses into liquid drops which form the thin sh.e.l.l of clouds that hovers above the earth's surface, while above and below is the gaseous atmosphere. In the case of the sun this cloud layer is always present and is that part which we have learned to call the photosphere. Above the photosphere lies the chromosphere, composed of gases less easily liquefied, hydrogen is the chief one, while between photosphere and chromosphere is a thin layer of metallic vapors, perhaps indistinguishable from the top crust of the photosphere itself, which by absorbing the light given off from the liquid photosphere produces the greater part of the Fraunhofer lines in the solar spectrum.

From time to time the hot matter struggling up from below breaks through the photosphere and, carrying with it a certain amount of the metallic vapors, is launched into the upper and cooler regions of the sun, where, parting with its heat, it falls back again upon the photosphere and is absorbed into it. It is altogether probable that the corona is chiefly composed of fine particles ejected from the sun with velocities sufficient to carry them to a height of millions of miles, or even sufficient to carry them off never to return. The matter of the corona must certainly be in a state of the most lively agitation, its particles being alternately hurled up from the photosphere and falling back again like fireworks, the particles which make up the corona of to-day being quite a different set from those of yesterday or last week. It seems beyond question that the prominences and faculae too are produced in some way by this up-and-down circulation of the sun's matter, and that any mechanical explanation of the sun must be worked out along these lines; but the problem is an exceedingly difficult one, and must include and explain many other features of the sun's activity of which only a few can be considered here.

129. THE SUN-SPOT PERIOD.--Sun spots come and go, and at best any particular spot is but short-lived, rarely lasting more than a month or two, and more often its duration is a matter of only a few days. They are not equally numerous at all times, but, like swarms of locusts, they seem to come and abound for a season and then almost to disappear, as if the forces which produced them were of a periodic character alternately active and quiet. The effect of this periodic activity since 1870 is shown in Fig. 81, where the horizontal line is a scale of times, and the distance of the curve above this line for any year shows the relative number of spots which appeared upon the sun in that year. This indicates very plainly that 1870, 1883, and 1893 were years of great sun-spot activity, while 1879 and 1889 were years in which few spots appeared.

The older records, covering a period of two centuries, show the same fluctuations in the frequency of sun spots and from these records curves (which may be found in Young's, The Sun) have been plotted, showing a succession of waves extending back for many years.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 81.--The curve of sun-spot frequency.]

The sun-spot period is the interval of time from the crest or hollow of one wave to the corresponding part of the next one, and on the average this appears to be a little more than eleven years, but is subject to considerable variation. In accordance with this period there is drawn in broken lines at the right of Fig. 81 a predicted continuation of the sun-spot curve for the first decade of the twentieth century. The irregularity shown by the three preceding waves is such that we must not expect the actual course of future sun spots to correspond very closely to the prediction here made; but in a general way 1901 and 1911 will probably be years of few sun spots, while they will be numerous in 1905, but whether more or less numerous than at preceding epochs of greatest frequency can not be foretold with any approach to certainty so long as we remain in our present ignorance of the causes which make the sun-spot period.

Determine from Fig. 81 as accurately as possible the length of the sun-spot period. It is hard to tell the exact position of a crest or hollow of the curve. Would it do to draw a horizontal line midway between top and bottom of the curve and determine the length of the period from its intersections with the curve--e. g., in 1874 and 1885?

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 82.--Ill.u.s.trating change of the sun-spot zones.]

130. THE SUN-SPOT ZONES.--It has been already noted that sun spots are found only in certain zones of lat.i.tude upon the sun, and that faculae and eruptive prominences abound in these zones more than elsewhere, although not strictly confined to them. We have now to note a peculiarity of these zones which ought to furnish a clew to the sun's mechanism, although up to the present time it has not been successfully traced out. Just before a sun-spot minimum the few spots which appear are for the most part cl.u.s.tered near the sun's equator. As these spots die out two new groups appear, one north the other south of the sun's equator and about 25 or 30 distant from it, and as the period advances toward a maximum these groups shift their positions more and more toward the equator, thus approaching each other but leaving between them a vacant lane, which becomes steadily narrower until at the close of the period, when the next minimum is at hand, it reaches its narrowest dimensions, but does not altogether close up even then. In Fig. 82 these relations are shown for the period falling between 1879 and 1890, by means of the horizontal lines; for each year one line in the northern and one in the southern hemisphere of the sun, their lengths being proportional to the number of spots which appeared in the corresponding hemisphere during the year, and their positions on the sun's disk showing the average lat.i.tude of the spots in question. It is very apparent from the figure that during this decade the sun's southern hemisphere was much more active than the northern one in the production of spots, and this appears to be generally the case, although the difference is not usually as great as in this particular decade.

131. INFLUENCE OF THE SUN-SPOT PERIOD.--Sun spots are certainly less hot than the surrounding parts of the sun's surface, and, in view of the intimate dependence of the earth upon the solar radiation, it would be in no way surprising if their presence or absence from the sun's face should make itself felt in some degree upon the earth, raising and lowering its temperature and quite possibly affecting it in other ways.

Ingenious men have suggested many such kinds of influence, which, according to their investigations, appear to run in cycles of eleven years. Abundant and scanty harvests, cyclones, tornadoes, epidemics, rainfall, etc., are among these alleged effects, and it is possible that there may be a real connection between any or all of them and the sun-spot period, but for the most part astronomers are inclined to hold that there is only one case in which the evidence is strong enough to really establish a connection of this kind. The magnetic condition of the earth and its disturbances, which are called magnetic storms, do certainly follow in a very marked manner the course of sun-spot activity, and perhaps there should be added to this the statement that auroras (northern lights) stand in close relation to these magnetic disturbances and are most frequent at the times of sun-spot maxima.

Upon the sun, however, the influence of the spot period is not limited to things in and near the photosphere, but extends to the outermost limits of the corona. Determine from Fig. 81 the particular part of the sun-spot period corresponding to the date of each picture of the corona and note how the pictures which were taken near times of sun-spot minima present a general agreement in the shape and extent of the corona, while the pictures taken at a time of maximum activity of the sun spots show a very differently shaped and much smaller corona.

132. THE LAW OF THE SUN'S ROTATION.--We have seen in a previous part of the chapter how the time required by the sun to make a complete rotation upon its axis may be determined from photographs showing the progress of a spot or group of spots across its disk, and we have now to add that when this is done systematically by means of many spots situated in different solar lat.i.tudes it leads to a very peculiar and extraordinary result. Each particular parallel of lat.i.tude has its own period of rotation different from that of its neighbors on either side, so that there can be no such thing as a fixed geography of the sun's surface.

Every part of it is constantly taking up a new position with respect to every other part, much as if the Gulf of Mexico should be south of the United States this year, southeast of it next year, and at the end of a decade should have shifted around to the opposite side of the earth from us. A meridian of longitude drawn down the Mississippi Valley remains always a straight line, or, rather, great circle, upon the surface of the earth, while Fig. 83 shows what would become of such a meridian drawn through the equatorial parts of the sun's disk. In the first diagram it appears as a straight line running down the middle of the sun's disk. Twenty-five days later, when the same face of the sun comes back into view again, after making a complete revolution about the axis, the equatorial parts will have moved so much faster and farther than those in higher lat.i.tudes that the meridian will be warped as in the second diagram, and still more warped after another and another revolution, as shown in the figure.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 83.--Effect of the sun's peculiar rotation in warping a meridian, originally straight.]

At least such is the case if the spots truly represent the way in which the sun turns round. There is, however, a possibility that the spots themselves drift with varying speeds across the face of the sun, and that the differences which we find in their rates of motion belong to them rather than to the photosphere. Just what happens in the regions near the poles is hard to say, for the sun spots only extend about halfway from the equator to the poles, and the spectroscope, which may be made to furnish a certain amount of information bearing upon the case, is not as yet altogether conclusive, nor are the faculae which have also been observed for this purpose.

The simple theory that the solar phenomena are caused by an interchange of hotter and cooler matter between the photosphere and the lower strata of the sun furnishes in its present shape little or no explanation of such features as the sun-spot period, the variations in the corona, the peculiar character of the sun's rotation, etc., and we have still unsolved in the mechanical theory of the sun one of the n.o.blest problems of astronomy, and one upon which both observers and theoretical astronomers are a.s.siduously working at the present time. A close watch is kept upon sun spots and prominences, the corona is observed at every total eclipse, and numerous are the ingenious methods which are being suggested and tried for observing it without an eclipse in ordinary daylight. Attempts, more or less plausible, have been made and are now pending to explain photosphere, spots and the reversing layer by means of the refraction of light within the sun's outer envelope of gases, and it seems altogether probable, in view of these combined activities, that a considerable addition to our store of knowledge concerning the sun may be expected in the not distant future.

CHAPTER XI

THE PLANETS

133. PLANETS.--Circling about the sun, under the influence of his attraction, is a family of planets each member of which is, like the moon, a dark body shining by reflected sunlight, and therefore presenting phases; although only two of them, Mercury and Venus, run through the complete series--new, first quarter, full, last quarter--which the moon presents. The way in which their orbits are grouped about the sun has been considered in Chapter III, and Figs. 16 and 17 of that chapter may be completed so as to represent all of the planets by drawing in Fig. 16 two circles with radii of 7.9 and 12.4 centimeters respectively, to represent the orbits of the planets Ura.n.u.s and Neptune, which are more remote from the sun than Saturn, and by introducing a little inside the orbit of Jupiter about 500 ellipses of different sizes, shapes, and positions to represent a group of minor planets or asteroids as they are often called. It is convenient to regard these asteroids as composing by themselves a cla.s.s of very small planets, while the remaining 8 larger planets fall naturally into two other cla.s.ses, a group of medium-sized ones--Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars--called inner planets by reason of their nearness to the sun; and the outer planets--Jupiter, Saturn, Ura.n.u.s, Neptune--each of which is much larger and more ma.s.sive than any planet of the inner group. Compare in Figs. 84 and 85 their relative sizes. The earth, _E_, is introduced into Fig. 85 as a connecting link between the two figures.

Some of these planets, like the earth, are attended by one or more moons, technically called satellites, which also shine by reflected sunlight and which move about their respective planets in accordance with the law of gravitation, much as the moon moves around the earth.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 84.--The inner planets and the moon.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 85.--The outer planets.]

134. DISTANCES OF THE PLANETS FROM THE SUN.--It is a comparatively simple matter to observe these planets year after year as they move among the stars, and to find from these observations how long each one of them requires to make its circuit around the sun--that is, its periodic time, _T_, which figures in Kepler's Third Law, and when these periodic times have been ascertained, to use them in connection with that law to determine the mean distance of each planet from the sun.

Thus, Jupiter requires 4,333 days to move completely around its...o...b..t; and comparing this with the periodic time and mean distance of the earth we find--

a^{3} / (4333^{2}) = (93,000,000^{3}) / (365.25^{2}),

which when solved gives as the mean distance of Jupiter from the sun, 483,730,000 miles, or 5.20 times as distant as the earth. If we make a similar computation for each planet, we shall find that their distances from the sun show a remarkable agreement with an artificial series of numbers called Bode's law. We write down the numbers contained in the first line of figures below, each of which, after the second, is obtained by doubling the preceding one, add 4 to each number and point off one place of decimals; the resulting number is (approximately) the distance of the corresponding planet from the sun.

Mercury. Venus. Earth. Mars. Jupiter. Saturn. Ura.n.u.s. Neptune.

0 3 6 12 24 48 96 192 384 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 0.4 0.7 1.0 1.6 2.8 5.2 10.0 19.6 38.8 0.4 0.7 1.0 1.5 2.8 5.2 9.5 19.2 30.1

The last line of figures shows the real distance of the planet as determined from Kepler's law, the earth's mean distance from the sun being taken as the unit for this purpose. With exception of Neptune, the agreement between Bode's law and the true distances is very striking, but most remarkable is the presence in the series of a number, 2.8, with no planet corresponding to it. This led astronomers at the time Bode published the law, something more than a century ago, to give new heed to a suggestion made long before by Kepler, that there might be an unknown planet moving between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, and a number of them agreed to search for such a planet, each in a part of the sky a.s.signed him for that purpose. But they were antic.i.p.ated by Piazzi, an Italian, who found the new planet, by accident, on the first day of the nineteenth century, moving at a distance from the sun represented by the number 2.77.

This planet was the first of the asteroids, and in the century that has elapsed hundreds of them have been discovered, while at the present time no year pa.s.ses by without several more being added to the number. While some of these are nearer to the sun than is the first one discovered, and others are farther from it, their average distance is fairly represented by the number 2.8.

Why Bode's law should hold true, or even so nearly true as it does, is an unexplained riddle, and many astronomers are inclined to call it no law at all, but only a chance coincidence--an ill.u.s.tration of the "inherent capacity of figures to be juggled with"; but if so, it is pa.s.sing strange that it should represent the distance of the asteroids and of Ura.n.u.s, which was also an undiscovered planet at the time the law was published.

135. THE PLANETS COMPARED WITH EACH OTHER.--When we pa.s.s from general considerations to a study of the individual peculiarities of the planets, we find great differences in the extent of knowledge concerning them, and the reason for this is not far to seek. Neptune and Ura.n.u.s, at the outskirts of the solar system, are so remote from us and so feebly illumined by the sun that any detailed study of them can go but little beyond determining the numbers which represent their size, ma.s.s, density, the character of their orbits, etc. The asteroids are so small that in the telescope they look like mere points of light, absolutely indistinguishable in appearance from the fainter stars. Mercury, although closer at hand and presenting a disk of considerable size, always stands so near the sun that its observation is difficult on this account. Something of the same kind is true for Venus, although in much less degree; while Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn are comparatively easy objects for telescopic study, and our knowledge of them, while far from complete, is considerably greater than for the other planets.

Figs. 84 and 85 show the relative sizes of the planets composing the inner and outer groups respectively, and furnish the numerical data concerning their diameters, ma.s.ses, densities, etc., which are of most importance in judging of their physical condition. Each planet, save Saturn, is represented by two circles, of which the outer is drawn proportional to the size of the planet, and the inner shows the amount of material that must be subtracted from the interior in order that the remaining sh.e.l.l shall just float in water. Note the great difference in thickness of sh.e.l.l between the two groups. Saturn, having a mean density less than that of water, must have something loaded upon it, instead of removed, in order that it should float just submerged.

JUPITER

136. APPEARANCE.--Commencing our consideration of the individual planets with Jupiter, which is by far the largest of them, exceeding both in bulk and ma.s.s all the others combined, we have in Fig. 86 four representations of Jupiter and his family of satellites as they may be seen in a very small telescope--e. g., an opera gla.s.s--save that the little dots which here represent the satellites are numbered _1_, _2_, _3_, _4_, in order to preserve their ident.i.ty in the successive pictures.

The chief interest of these pictures lies in the satellites, but, reserving them for future consideration, we note that the planet itself resembles in shape the full moon, although in respect of brightness it sends to us less than 1/6000 part as much light as the moon. From a consideration of the motion of Jupiter and the earth in Fig. 16, show that Jupiter can not present any such phases as does the moon, but that its disk must be at all times nearly full. As seen from Saturn, what kind of phases would Jupiter present?

137. THE BELTS.--Even upon the small scale of Fig. 86 we detect the most characteristic feature of Jupiter's appearance in the telescope, the two bands extending across his face parallel to the line of the satellites, and in Fig. 87 these same dark bands may be recognized amid the abundance of detail which is here brought out by a large telescope.

Photography does not succeed as a means of reproducing this detail, and for it we have to rely upon the skill of the artist astronomer. The lettering shows the Pacific Standard time at which the sketches were made, and also the longitude of the meridian of Jupiter pa.s.sing down the center of the planet's disk.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 86.--Jupiter and his satellites.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 87.--Drawings of Jupiter made at the 36-inch telescope of the Lick Observatory.--KEELER.]

The dark bands are called technically the belts of Jupiter; and a comparison of these belts in the second and third pictures of the group, in which nearly the same face of the planet is turned toward us, will show that they are subject to considerable changes of form and position even within the s.p.a.ce of a few days. So, too, by a comparison of such markings as the round white spots in the upper parts of the disks, and the indentations in the edges of the belts, we may recognize that the planet is in the act of turning round, and must therefore have an axis about which it turns, and poles, an equator, etc. The belts are in fact parallel to the planet's equator; and generalizing from what appears in the pictures, we may say that there is always a strongly marked belt on each side of the equator with a lighter colored streak between them, and that farther from the equator are other belts variable in number, less conspicuous, and less permanent than the two first seen. Compare the position of the princ.i.p.al belts with the position of the zones of sun-spot activity in the sun. A feature of the planet's surface, which can not be here reproduced, is the rich color effect to be found upon it. The princ.i.p.al belts are a brick-red or salmon color, the intervening s.p.a.ces in general white but richly mottled, and streaked with purples, browns, and greens.

The drawings show the planet as it appeared in the telescope, inverted, and they must be turned upside down if we wish the points of the compa.s.s to appear as upon a terrestrial map. Bearing this in mind, note in the last picture the great oval spot in the southern hemisphere of Jupiter.

This is a famous marking, known from its color as the _great red spot_, which appeared first in 1878 and has persisted to the present day (1900), sometimes the most conspicuous marking on the planet, at others reduced to a mere ghost of itself, almost invisible save for the indentation which it makes in the southern edge of the belt near it.

138. ROTATION AND FLATTENING AT THE POLES.--One further significant fact with respect to Jupiter may be obtained from a careful measurement of the drawings; the planet is flattened at the poles, so that its polar diameter is about one sixteenth part shorter than the equatorial diameter. The flattening of the earth amounts to only one three-hundredth part, and the marked difference between these two numbers finds its explanation in the greater swiftness of Jupiter's rotation about its axis, since in both cases it is this rotation which makes the flattening.

It is not easy to determine the precise dimensions of the planet, since this involves a knowledge both of its distance from us and of the angle subtended by its diameter, but the most recent determinations of this kind a.s.sign as the equatorial diameter 90,200 miles, and for the polar diameter 84,400 miles. Determine from either of these numbers the size of the great red spot.

The earth turns on its axis once in 24 hours but no such definite time can be a.s.signed to Jupiter, which, like the sun, seems to have different rotation periods in different lat.i.tudes--9h. 50m. in the equatorial belt and 9h. 56m. in the dark belts and higher lat.i.tudes. There is some indication that the larger part of the visible surface rotates in 9h.