Abstract
PROF. C. A. YOUNG has obligingly sent me an account of his recent work, which is very rich in promise, as he tells me that he has now the dispersive power of 13 prisms of heavy flint, each with an angle of 55°. It is now some time ago since I announced to the Royal Society that over soots prominences, built up of different valours, were sometimes observable by means of their lines, bright and thin, overlying the thick absorption lines in the spot spectra. This observation is, I hold, a clear proof of the truth of the theory put forward by Dr. Frankland and myself, namely, that changes in spectra, notably the thickening of the lines, are due to pressure, and not to temperature; for according to the theory of exchanges, the bright prominence must be hotter than the absorbing vapour which underlies it, and still the lines are thinner.
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LOCKYER, J. Spectroscopic Observations of the Sun . Nature 3, 34 (1870). https://doi.org/10.1038/003034b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/003034b0