Researches on Meteorites ¹

Abstract

II. The Cases of Nova Orionis and R Geminorum. THE stars with bright carbon flutings, the same as those seen in comets, are not limited to first-magnitude stars, such as a Orionis, but include at least one new star, Nova Orionis. Because the latter star lasted but a short time we might expect the phenomena presented to be different from those found in the first-magnitude star, which is a variable, like others with similar composite spectra. Practically there is little difference, for in a Orionis, a Herculis, and others of that type, we find well-marked dark absorption flutings of manganese, as well as line-absorption of sodium and magnesium.² The absorptions are not so well developed in the Nova, for the reason, perhaps, that condensation due to gravity had not taken place to such a great extent, so that the heat of the stones themselves was not so great, and further because the local absorption around each meteorite would be cloaked by the bright radiation of the interspaces, which gives, as in comets, the maximum inten sity to the bright fluting, wave-lengthily. In R Geminorum the demonstration of the same meteoric constitution, but without the strong absorption, is given by the fact that in that star so much of the light proceeds from the vapour produced by the meteorites, and from the carbon in the interspaces, that the carbon flutings and the bright lines of barium and strontium, and other substances present in meteorites, are visible at the same time, exactly as they are seen in the glow over a meteorite in an experimental tube, in which, as the pressure is reduced, the edges alone of the carbon flutings are visible, and put on the appear ance of bright lines, almost exactly resembling the bright lines of the heated meteorites.