Uy6l 30 OYSN8S4 30 LI-Id CORREO MEXICO. I?LONGINES od LIE waleh fora THE WORLD'S MOST HONORED WATCH Charmitepectectinatonginesladies! Satoh Uncpected isthe unten a Scusey and etary dependability of nlstiny mechanisin Ton worldsfaie ened prises and 2 fold medals a0 Eomaine’ awards foc elogance and Siiance, Longines Wittnauer jovel- show Londines Watches for every fimekecnind need: aso. Wittnause Watches, a companion line moder iy priced from $23.75—product of Lonaines-WittnauerWatchCompary, ne York, Montreal, Geneva. reer reer Cine nos 2 Sky ano Trtnscore TELESCOPE “iS Cranes A. Fepent, Ja. Editor DITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD: Clement 5. ion, New York: Edward A. Halbach, Mivvaston Avrcnamical Society: Donald, Mansel, Harvard vatory: Paul W. Meni, Mt. Wisor Obvervatery: Oxeat E, Monnig s: Henry Norris Restll, Pincaton Univrsly, Obvartstony: Chatter He S Ladd’ Obioreatory: Perey W. Witherall, Bord Asroromical Cli. Hotes Seexce Feoenee Managing Editor | ASTHOUGH not naying te autnor- Frequent tombings during « 160day ity of even amateur philatelists, round-trip Journey by open truck, two wwe venture to say that Mexico's recent weeks” rain during thelt testing period, Insue of six stamps commemorating and the nenarrival of their Dest the dedication of the Tonanzintia Ob camera could not stay persevering | servatory produces some of the frst Chinese astronomers from olnerving stampe using strictly astronomical and photographing successfully the themes fo mark an event of aatro- total solar eclipse of September 2, nnomical import. Stars and’ planets, 1941. Except for a letter from Foster the sun and moon, have been inchuded D, Brunton in Guam (December, 1041 | sm many stamps: the Sonthern Cross Sky and Telescope), the report from | ia favorite with southern countries; Dr. ¥.C. Chang, appearing in the April Tut weually the main theme of « stamp Sssue of Popular Astronomy, ie the itcontains frst recelved. Tt includes pletures of | sare used symbolically. Occasionally, corona of elreular form—usual dar an observatory is pletured (see Dr. {ng minimum *nspot period Roy K. Marshalls article on astro: : The Chinese astronomers journeyed nomical stamps, The SKY. July, 1928). 49 an open truck from Kunming, Yan | ut’ tnae is sti» terrestrial obj sian province, where the National Tn stitute of Astronomy ix now lorated, Thee Dew stampa afe ccleatial—st ereal—and to appreciate them re Aurea some “anowiedge ot modern $240 ilomelers to Lintao, Kanes ve Sas eatcenarels they measured the light of the corona, hy the Chinese government Vou. I, No. 7 CONTENTS COVER: 7 dedic the Notional Astroph {lot cokome} ip we THE DIAGNOSIS OF STARS FROM THEIR SPECTRA Dent Hof 2 WEATHER SIGNS IN THE SKY—Wiliam H. Barton, J 7 THE ANALEMMA Ewin Ro! " HIGHOISPERSION SPECTRA. Seon “ Amateur Astronomers, 18 Have and Thete with Amateur ” ‘Askinemical Ansedotos 2M Feom ” Beginners Page 19 News Notet 20 Becks and the Sky 21 Observer's Page Deo You Know? & Planetariam Notes 2 ings for ATMs 22 The Starry Heavens in May 2% Keotahy l SeoJHE spectra of the stars—those tiny ‘ainbows we observe when starlight passes throagh a prism—serve the astronomer somewhat similarly to the way that Xays serve the physician. OF course, the spectrum of a star docs not show us anything very far beneath the surface of en woe ws tans: the analogy lies rather in the specificness Of the information acquired, Direst photographs or visual obserya- tions reveal comparatively few of a star's characteristics. A single photograph tells tus only the apparent brightness and ap- parent location in the sky.. Numerous pho- Aographs of a star, properly planned, can reveal its variability (if any), parallax, ap- [parent motion perpendicular to the line of Sight, and the color (from which the tem- perature may be inferred). Unless the star happens fortunately to be one com: Ponent of a recognized double star, this is about all thar the direet photogeaphs will indicate. ‘The spectrum, on the other hand, gives ‘us much additional information. Ieis a Familiar fact that the lines in any spectrum ate characteristic of the chemical elements of the source. Likewise, the story of spec tral classification and is subsequent inter pretation in terins of the temperatures of the stars has oftem been related. (See The Telescope, March-April, 194%, “Stellar Spectra and the Diagnosis of Stars.") These I shall only mention herc, and pass ‘on to other considerations some less rex Tutionary, perhaps, than the catly discover ics of the chemistry and temperatures of the stars, but nevertheless significant By 1901, the Draper system of spectral classification had. been iaisly well fected. Other schemes were indeed in frequent use, but the various systems were for the most part closely correlated, many of the differences being merely in notation, On the Draper system, ‘uniquely lasiied along a one-dimensional Sequence, which to a frst approximation is an arrangement by color, and in the last analysis isa temperature arrangement. THE DIAGNOSIS OF STARS FROM THEIR SPECTRA By Doratr Horrerr Harvard College Observatory De. E, Herteeprung, director of Leiden of the dis. t let), former rector of the same inditution, Photo. ‘raph by David B. Pickering. Such a one-dimensional sequence was con sistent with the then most acceptable theories of stellar evolution, Tn 1907, however, the great Danish as tronomer, Hertesprung, found, from a comparison of their relative distances ay apparent brightness, that all stars of the same spectral class are not similar. Among the orange and red stars, for example, some are very large and very luminous, while others are small and faint. These two classes of stars he is said to have & (adie i Kaur aur He i Te eh 4s Gy XUMa 2 e SY e Cap ; ein a Coe wnfe WS Th differences b parked Ca i with » Aurigae nicknamed giants and dwarfs, names the stars have retained legitienately ever since. Hertzsprung could not believe that stars which differed perhaps a hundredfold in real brightness should not show differences in their spectra. He, himself, did not hay availble any spectra to examine. But he ‘made use of the admirably detailed de. Scciptons Of spect published. by Miss Antonia C. Maury at Harvard College ‘Observatory. From her descriptions found that the spectra of his giant stars dll actually differ from the dwarfs in! wo respects. In the first place, the lines of the spectra of the highly” luminous stars were exceedingly sharp, whereas the lines in the dwarf spectra were diffuse and relay tively illdefined. Then, among the less conspicuous lines, he discovered that some were much more prominent in the giants " 984 dB4 is gA2 a2 y ee 464 A eed ca In y Aur pecteal typ is due cium, indicating tra, by W. W, Morgan Way, by Bok and Tok. Skx ano Tenescore 3than in the var ‘This ner character istic was later independently discovered Adame and Kebichater Me, Wisos Observatory, where it has since been put to the very’ practical use of determining the absolute magnitudes and distances of the stars. ‘The absolute magnitude, you will recall, is 4 quantity defining the true brightness of a star, The apparent magnitude tells us how bright a star looks ‘The. ablte magnitude tells us how bright it would ook if all the stars were at a standard distance from us—i0 parsees, 33 light years. Suppose we have two stars of the same temperature and the sume composition, but of diferent size. ‘The larger star will then, naturally, be the brighter. It also ‘turns out that the pressure is less in the ‘tmosphere of the larger star. We know, both from theoretical coqsiderations and from experiments in physics laboratories, that gases are more easly ionized (robbed ‘of electrons) at low than at high pressures. Applying this information to stellar atmos- pheres, we should expect ionized atoms to bbe more prominent in bright, large stars than nth deat srs ofthe same tem- ature. This is. precisely what Adams ha Rotiuchitter Cound. Fence in order to discover the relative true brightneses of the star, all we need dois to estimate from their spectra the comparative abundances ‘of the ionized element ‘The most satisfactory way to find the distances of the nearby sars has been by twiangulation, the diameter of the earth's ‘orbit being ‘uscd as a baseline. That ‘method isy however, uncertain for stars farther away than 100. or 30 light-years; and itis hopeless for stars 1,900 light-years ‘away. Such distances. reach hardly a tenth of the way from here to the center ‘of our own Milky Way galaxy. By our spectroscopic method, we can determine the true brightness of a sta. We already know how bright it looks. ‘Hence, i is an easy matter to compute its distance (provided nothing obstructs the starlight appreciably). For the relatively nearby stars we find that the distances determined spectrographically compare very well with the distances found by the twangulation method. We can, however, measure the spectra of the very distant stars with the same degree of accuracy as the spectra of the nearby stars. In this reapeet, the larger telescopes and more ficient spectrographs are coming to our aid, enabling us to gather mote light from the faint stars and thus to extend to greater distances our investigations of the dist bution of the stars ‘The luminosities themselves show an teresting distribution. We find that the ‘majority of the giant stars, supcrgiants ex cluded, have nearly the same intrinsic Iprightness (within a factor of about 10), regardless of their temperatures. The “dwarf, or main-sequence stars, as they are | © alten ‘called, show an entirely different A Sky ano Texescore state of atfairs. The blue, hot stars are all very bright, of the order of 100 times bighter than the sin. The yellow dwvarts are like our sun. Big a6 the sun seems to us, itis merely a dwarf among the stars." But itis very much brighter than the red dwact stars, which may be several thousand times fainter. Prof. Hency Norris Russell was the frst (1913) 10 illosrate this systematic array into which stllar temperatures and. ly tminosities could be arranged. For him it formed the basis of a theory of the evo- lation of the stars. This theory had had carly forerunners, notably one by Sir Nor san Lockyer, but in. Russell's investiga tions it first’ atained logical perfection combined with apparent observational Support. ‘ecording tothe theory, a star begins its life as a red giant star, rsy and pulled with the very. pride of existence, AS it sows older it shrinks, and while it shrinks it becomes hotter and hotter, and hence ‘luce. Finally it reaches a) maximum temperature: it has become too hot for its increased density. It then begins to coo and as it cools, keeps on shrinking, but now at a faster rate than before. Te there fore becomes both fainter and redder. This was considered the general scheme of star’ life: from red giant to hot, blve star; from a bright, blue sar to a yellow ‘dwarf; and init ripe old age, a red dwarf Naturally, the human race has ot bad VISUAL a ABSOLUTE | 6 WHITE DWARFS +5 ei 80 Ao tudes SPECTRAL CLASS. The Rusell-Hertesprung diagram shows the relation specteal classes time to observe changes from cdwart in any single star. We see how a star, the sun for radiating now, and predict how it have appeared in the past and wh present activity should lead it, Tf we. find other stars satisfying our descripti ofthe probable past and future ofthe then we may have a. tolerable, eauti sort of faith in our theory Just when Russell’ original theory was held in the greatest esteem, because it counted s0 well for all the observed facts. about the stars, a remarkable di was made which seemed to throw do fon everything. We saw that the predicted one variety of hot, blue 3% and both giants and dwarfs’ among. cooler stars. Now it happens that the bright Dog Sta, Sirius, has a faint eom= anion revolving around it, 10 close to rvs that for many years it was impos sible tb obtain its spectrum or determi: its color. But, knowing the distance of Sirius, astronomers could. ascertain une equivocly thatthe companion it clwarf. No one ever thought of question: — ing the infevence thatthe ator mat be € 9 red dwarf, In agrs, Adams at Mt. Wilson at last succeeded i photographing its spectrum, ‘Astronomers felt skeptical; they were cme bharrassed; in fact, they would not beliewe. Spectra do not lie. Yet this spectrom — could not be telling the truth. For it said Fo