The Spectroscope, an instrument devised for the examination of spectra, is, in its simplest form, composed of a small tube with a narrow slit and prism at one end, and an eye-piece at the other. If we drop ordinary table salt into the flame of a gas light, the flame becomes strongly yellow. If, then, we observe this yellow flame with the spectroscope, we find that its spectrum consists almost entirely of two bright yellow transverse lines. Chemically considered ordinary table salt is sodium chloride; that is to say, a compound of the metal sodium and the gas chlorine. Now if other compounds of sodium be experimented with in the same manner, it will soon be found that these two yellow lines are characteristic of sodium when turned into vapour by great heat. In the same manner it can be ascertained that every element, when heated to a condition of vapour, gives as its spectrum a set of lines peculiar to itself. Thus the spectroscope enables us to find out the composition of substances when they are reduced to vapour in the laboratory.
Fig. 9.—The Solar Spectrum.
In order to increase the power of a spectroscope, it is necessary to add to the number of prisms. Each extra prism has the effect of lengthening the coloured strip still more, so that lines, which at first appeared to be single merely through being crowded together, are eventually drawn apart and become separately distinguishable.
On this principle it has gradually been determined that the sun is composed of elements similar to those which go to make up our earth. Further, the composition of the stars can be ascertained in the same manner; and we find them formed on a like pattern, though with certain elements in greater or less proportion as the case may be. It is in consequence of our thus definitely ascertaining that the stars are self-luminous, and of a sun-like character, that we are enabled to speak of them as suns, or to call the sun a star.
In endeavouring to discover the elements of which the planets and satellites of our system are composed, we, however, find ourselves baffled, for the simple reason that these bodies emit no real light of their own. The light which reaches us from them, being merely reflected sunlight, gives only the ordinary solar spectrum when examined with the spectroscope. But in certain cases we find that the solar spectrum thus viewed shows traces of being weakened, or rather of suffering absorption; and it is concluded that this may be due to the sunlight having had to pass through an atmosphere on its way to and from the surface of the planet from which it is reflected to us.
Since the sun is found to be composed of elements similar to those which go to make up our earth, we need not be disheartened at this failure of the spectroscope to inform us of the composition of the planets and satellites. We are justified, indeed, in assuming that more or less the same constituents run through our solar system; and that the elements of which these bodies are composed are similar to those which are found upon our earth and in the sun.