THE TOWER TELESCOPE
Both of these illustrations show how the physicist and chemist, when adequately armed for astronomical attack, can take advantage in their studies of the stupendous processes visible in cosmic crucibles, heated to high temperatures and influenced, as in the case of sun-spots, by intense magnetic fields. Certain modern instruments, like the 60-foot and 150-foot tower telescopes on Mount Wilson, are especially designed for observing the course of these experiments. The second of these telescopes produces at a fixed point in a laboratory an image of the sun about 16 inches in diameter, thus enlarging the sun-spots to such a scale that the magnetic phenomena of their various parts can be separately studied. This analysis is accomplished with a spectroscope 80 feet in length, mounted in a subterranean chamber beneath the tower. The varied results of such investigations cannot be described here. Only one of them may be mentioned—the discovery that the entire sun, rotating on its axis, is a great magnet. Hence we may reasonably infer that every star, and probably every planet, is also a magnet, as the earth has been known to be since the days of Gilbert's "De Magnete." Here lies one of the best clues for the physicist who seeks the cause of magnetism, and attempts to produce it, as Barnett has recently succeeded in doing, by rapidly whirling masses of metal in the laboratory.
Fig. 33. Sun-spot vortex in the upper hydrogen atmosphere. (Benioff).
Photographed with the spectroheliograph. The electric vortex that causes the magnetic field of the spot lies at a lower level, and is not shown by such photographs.
Perhaps a word of caution should be interpolated at this point. Solar magnetism in no wise accounts for the sun's gravitational power. Indeed, its attraction cannot be felt by the most delicate instruments at the distance of the earth, and would still be unknown were it not for the influence of magnetism on light.
Auroras, magnetic storms, and such electric currents as those that recently deranged several Atlantic cables are due, not to the magnetism of the sun or its spots, but probably to streams of electrons, shot out from highly disturbed areas of the solar surface surrounding great sun-spots, traversing ninety-three million miles of the ether of space, and penetrating deep into the earth's atmosphere. These striking phenomena lead us into another chapter of physics, which limitations of space forbid us to pursue.