Abstract
THE SPECTRUM OF MIRA.—During the recent maximum of Mira Ceti, Prof. Wilsing was fortunate enough to obtain eleven photographs of the spectrum (Sitz. Akad. Wiss., Berlin, March 26, 1896). The photographs are evidently very similar to those obtained by Prof. Pickering some years ago, hydrogen being represented by broad bright lines. The absence of the hydrogen line He, which falls very near a broad line of calcium, is again very striking, and the simplest explanation of this fact is to suppose that the hydrogen light at that wave-length is absorbed by calcium vapour. This necessitates the supposition that there is a cooler layer of calcium outside the incandescent hydrogen, but the high atomic weight of calcium cautions us to regard this hypothesis as merely provisional. There is no certain evidence at present as to whether the hydrogen lines appear in the spectrum except about the time of maximum, and the Potsdam instruments are not of sufficient aperture to permit such an investigation to be made.
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Our Astronomical Column. Nature 53, 612 (1896). https://doi.org/10.1038/053612b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/053612b0