Curiosities of the Sky by Garrett Putman Serviss (good story books to read TXT) 📕

sun-spots and the upshooting of eruptive prominences (phenomena which we should naturally expect to be attended by action), have been instantly followed by corresponding ``magnetic storms'' on the earth and brilliant displays of the auroral lights. There have been occasions when the influence has manifested itself in the most startling ways, a great solar outburst being followed by a mysterious gripping of the cable and telegraph systems of the world, as if an invisible and irresistible hand had seized them. Messages are abruptly cut off, sparks leap from the telegraph instruments, and the entire earth seems to have been thrown into a magnetic flurry. These occurrences affect the mind with a deep impression of the dependence of our planet on the sun, such as we do not derive from the more familiar action of the sunlight on the growth of plants and other phenomena of life depending on solar influences.

Perhaps the theory of solar magnetic influence upon the weather is best known in connection with the ``sun-spot cycle.'' This, at any rate, is, as already remarked, closely associated with the corona. Its existence was discovered in 1843 by the German astronomer Schwabe. It is a period of variable length, averaging about eleven years, during which the number of spots visible on the sun first increases to a maximum, then diminishes to a minimum, and finally increases again to a maximum. For unknown reasons the period is sometimes two or three years longer than the average and sometimes as much shorter. Nevertheless, the phenomena always recur in the same order. Starting, for instance, with a time when the observer can find few or no spots, they gradually increase in number and size until a maximum, in both senses, is reached, during which the spots are often of enormous size and exceedingly active. After two or three years they begin to diminish in number, magnitude, and activity until they almost or quite disappear. A strange fact is that when a new period opens, the spots appear first in high northern and southern latitudes, far from the solar equator, and as the period advances they not only increase in number and size, but break out nearer and nearer to the equator, the last spots of a vanishing period sometimes lingering in the equatorial region after the advance-guard of its successor has made its appearance in the high latitudes. Spots are never seen on the equator nor near the poles. It was not very long after the discovery of the sun-spot cycle that the curious observation was made that a striking coincidence existed between the period of the sun-spots and another period affecting the general magnetic condition of the earth. When a curved line representing the varying number of sun-spots was compared with another curve showing the variations in the magnetic state of the earth the two were seen to be in almost exact accord, a rise in one curve corresponding to a rise in the other, and a fall to a fall. Continued observation has proved that this is a real coincidence and not an accidental one, so that the connection, although as yet unexplained, is accepted as established. But does the influence extend further, and directly affect the weather and the seasons as well as the magnetic elements of the earth? A final answer to this question cannot yet be given, for the evidence is contradictory, and the interpretations put upon it depend largely on the predilections of the judges.

But, in a broad sense, the sun-spots and the phenomena connected with them must have a relation to terrestial meteorology, for they prove the sun to be a variable star. Reference was made, a few lines above, to the resemblance of the spectra of sun-spots to those of certain stars which seem to be failing through age. This in itself is extremely suggestive; but if this resemblance had never been discovered, we should have been justified in regarding the sun as variable in its output of energy; and not only variable, but probably increasingly so. The very inequalities in the sun-spot cycle are suspicious. When the sun is most spotted its total light may be reduced by one-thousandth part, although it is by no means certain that its outgiving of thermal radiations is then reduced. A loss of one-thousandth of its luminosity would correspond to a decrease of .0025 of a stellar magnitude, considering the sun as a star viewed from distant space. So slight a change would not be perceptible; but it is not alone sun-spots which obscure the solar surface, its entire globe is enveloped with an obscuring veil. When studied with a powerful telescope the sun's surface is seen to be thickly mottled with relatively obscure specks, so numerous that it has been estimated that they cut off from one-tenth to one-twentieth of the light that we should receive from it if the whole surface were as brilliant as its brightest parts. The condition of other stars warrants the conclusion that this obscuring envelope is the product of a process of refrigeration which will gradually make the sun more and more variable until its history ends in extinction. Looking backward, we see a time when the sun must have been more brilliant than it is now. At that time it probably shone with the blinding white splendor of such stars as Sirius, Spica, and Vega; now it resembles the relatively dull Procyon; in time it will turn ruddy and fall into the closing cycle represented by Antares. Considering that once it must have been more radiantly powerful than at present, one is tempted to wonder if that could have been the time when tropical life flourished within the earth's polar circles, sustained by a vivific energy in the sun which it has now lost.

The corona, as we have said, varies with the sun-spot cycle. When the spots are abundant and active the corona rises strong above the spotted zones, forming immense beams or streamers, which on one occasion, at least, had an observed length of ten million miles. At the time of a spot minimum the corona is less brilliant and has a different outline. It is then that the curved polar rays are most conspicuous. Thus the vast banners of the sun, shaken out in the eclipse, are signals to tell of its varying state, but it will probably be long before we can read correctly their messages.

The Zodiacal Light Mystery

There is a singular phenomenon in the sky -- one of the most puzzling of all -- which has long arrested the attention of astronomers, defying their efforts at explanation, but which probably not one in a hundred, and possibly not one in a thousand, of the readers of this book has ever seen. Yet its name is often spoken, and it is a conspicuous object if one knows when and where to look for it, and when well seen it exhibits a mystical beauty which at the same time charms and awes the beholder. It is called ``The Zodiacal Light,'' because it lies within the broad circle of the Zodiac, marking the sun's apparent annual path through the stars. What it is nobody has yet been able to find out with certainty, and books on astronomy usually speak of it with singular reserve. But it has given rise to many remarkable theories, and a true explanation of it would probably throw light on a great many other celestial mysteries. The Milky Way is a more wonderful object to look upon, but its nature can be comprehended, while there is a sort of uncanniness about the Zodiacal Light which immediately impresses one upon seeing it, for its part in the great scheme of extra-terrestrial affairs is not evident.

If you are out-of-doors soon after sunset -- say, on an evening late in the month of February -- you may perceive, just after the angry flush of the dying winter's day has faded from the sky, a pale ghostly presence rising above the place where the sun went down. The writer remembers from boyhood the first time it was pointed out to him and the unearthly impression that it made, so that he afterward avoided being out alone at night, fearful of seeing the spectral thing again. The phenomenon brightens slowly with the fading of the twilight, and soon distinctly assumes the shape of an elongated pyramid of pearly light, leaning toward the south if the place of observation is in the northern hemisphere. It does not impress the observer at all in the same manner as the Milky Way; that looks far off and is clearly among the stars, but the Zodiacal Light seems closer at hand, as if it were something more intimately concerning the earth. To all it immediately suggests a connection, also, with the sunken sun. If the night is clear and the moon absent (and if you are in the country, for city lights ruin the spectacles of the sky), you will be able to watch the apparition for a long time. You will observe that the light is brightest near the horizon, gradually fading as the pyramidal beam mounts higher, but in favorable circumstances it may be traced nearly to the meridian south of the zenith, where