To the unrivalled genius of Sir Isaac Newton we owe the solar spectrum, and the laws of coloured rings, by aid of which, Dr. Thomas Young proved and established the undulatory theory which forms the basis of the whole science of light. The visible part of the solar spectrum forming a band of seven colours was supposed to be continuous till the year 1802, when Dr. Wollaston looking with a prism whose axis was parallel to a narrow slit in a window shutter, at a sunbeam passing through it, discovered seven dark lines crossing the coloured band, at right angles to its length.
Twelve years afterwards, Fraunhofer of Munich, a celebrated optician, magnified the spectrum of a vertical line of light passing through an upright prism by receiving it upon the object glass of a telescope, and discovered 600 dark lines. Having ascertained that the position of the lines in the spectrum, and their distances from one another, are invariable under every circumstance, he determined their places accurately and drew the diagram known as Fraunhofer’s lines, which is universally referred to as a standard of comparison. For that purpose, the principal lines are designated by letters; thus the dark line A is in the red near the least refrangible end of the spectrum, B and C are in the orange, the very remarkable double line D is in the yellow, b and E are in the green, F is at the limit between the green and the blue, G is in the blue, and the double line H is in the violet.
The instrument used by MM. Bunsen and Kirchhoff, though more complicated, is constructed on the same principle as the preceding. A sunbeam transmitted by a very narrow vertical slit passes through four prisms, which disperse it so much, that if drawn on the scale seen with the magnifying telescope which receives it, the spectrum would extend over twenty feet. By means of a micrometer screw, the telescope can be turned round a vertical axis, and as the dark lines come successively under the cross wires in its eye-glass they are seen to pass over a graduated scale, so that the distances between two thousand of them have been measured in millimetres with unerring accuracy, but that is only a small part of the whole. When viewed through the telescope, the retina of the eye is the screen on which this wonderful spectrum falls, crossed by innumerable dark rayless lines of various breadths and intensities. Black bands given by the inferior refraction of one prism are here resolved into numerous dark lines as fine as a spider’s thread.
Mr. Glaisher during his tenth scientific balloon ascent devoted his attention for a time almost entirely to the dark lines on the solar spectrum. At a height of about four miles and a half, they were almost innumerable; all he had seen on the earth were there, and many more. The nebulous lines H were both seen, the spectrum was a good deal lengthened at the violet end, and at the red end the line A was visible. The light from the sky near the sun gave a shorter spectrum; the lines were only visible from B to G.
Besides these cosmical or permanent lines, Sir David Brewster observed that certain dark bands and lines in the red and green parts of the spectrum are only visible when the sun is near the horizon, whence he concluded that they are occasioned by the absorption of the solar light while traversing a thicker stratum of air than when the sun is in the zenith. Various groups of these absorption bands are to be seen at times on the solar spectrum, especially a remarkable one near Fraunhofer’s line D, and Dr. Miller observed that temporary dark lines appeared during a heavy shower, which vanished when the rain ceased.
When the sun was high, M. Kirchhoff mentions that he had noticed traces of lines and nebulous bands in different parts of the spectrum, which he thinks might be resolved by a greater number of prisms than those in his apparatus.
Sir David Brewster was led to his discovery of atmospheric bands by observing that the brownish red vapour of nitrous oxide has the property of absorbing solar light, resolving the spectrum into a series of bright and dark bands, alternating. Professors Daniel and Miller found that bromine, iodine, and chlorous acid do the same, and Sir John Herschel observed a multitude of similar bands in the flame of cyanogen; but Dr. W. A. Miller, who has particularly studied the phenomena of absorption bands, has proved that the colour of a vapour does not necessarily determine the position or even the existence of dark bands. He has shown that some simple substances which do not occasion dark bands produce them abundantly by the absorptive power they acquire when in composition, while lines that are produced by a simple vapour, vanish when it is in combination. Dr. W. A. Miller has proved also that none of the preceding vapours exist in the atmosphere. He computed that if free bromine constituted only one in a thousand million parts of atmospheric air, it would betray its presence by absorptive bands; nevertheless he suspects that there may be some substance in the air that occasions certain unaccountable changes. Possibly ozone, so intimately connected with atmospheric electricity, may produce some unknown effect.
The spectra from glowing solids and liquids, such as Drummond’s light, which is incandescent lime, the still more brilliant flame of the electric arc between charcoal points, glowing solid and fused metals, and coal-gas flame, are continuous; the spectra exhibit the seven colours, but they are not crossed by dark rayless lines, because such incandescent substances give off light of all refrangibility. But solids and liquids reduced to glowing vapours, and incandescent gases, only give out rays of certain refrangibilities, which cross their spectra at right angles, as bright lines of various colours and intensities. Each glowing vapour and gas has bright lines on its spectrum peculiar to itself.
In order to compare these bright lines with Fraunhofer’s dark lines, solar light is transmitted through one half of the vertical slit in Kirchhoff’s apparatus, and the light of the luminous vapour or gas through the other half. Then by prismatic refraction two spectra are seen in looking through the telescope, the gaseous one immediately below the solar one, and only divided from it by an almost imperceptible dark line. So that the bright lines appear to be continuations of the dark lines if they occupy the same position in the two spectra; if not, the deviation is at once visible. The coincidence or deviation of the bright lines on the spectra of two volatilized substances may be determined by the same method.
The coloured light that has so beautiful an effect in fire-works is owing to the combustion of the salts of different metals: as soda, or common salt, which gives a perfectly pure homogeneous yellow; potash gives a violet light, strontia red, baryta green. The colour is given out by the glowing atoms of the vaporized metals sodium, potassium, strontium, and barium in a state of violent ignition; for as the salt and its metal give the same colour and the same spectrum when ignited, it is evident that the colour is independent of the oxygen of the alkali.