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Page 26
[Illustration: Fig. 34.--Solar Prominences of Flaming Hydrogen.]
But when Professor Young returned, about half an hour later, he
found that a very wonderful change had taken place, and that a
very remarkable process was actually in progress. "The whole thing
had been literally blown to shreds," he says, "by some inconceivable
uprush from beneath. In place of the quiet cloud I had [Page 87]
left, the air--if I may use the expression--was filled with the
flying _d�bris_, a mass of detached vertical fusi-form fragments,
each from ten to thirty seconds (_i. e._, from four thousand five
hundred to thirteen thousand five hundred miles) long, by two or
three seconds (nine hundred to thirteen hundred and fifty miles)
wide--brighter, and closer together where the pillars had formerly
stood, and rapidly ascending. When I looked, some of them had
already reached a height of nearly four minutes (100,000 miles); and
while I watched them they arose with a motion almost perceptible to
the eye, until, in ten minutes, the uppermost were more than 200,000
miles above the solar surface. This was ascertained by careful
measurements, the mean of three closely accordant determinations
giving 210,000 miles as the extreme altitude attained. I am
particular in the statement, because, so far as I know,
chromatospheric matter (red hydrogen in this case) has never before
been observed at any altitude exceeding five minutes, or 135,000
miles. The velocity of ascent, also--one hundred and sixty-seven
miles per second--is considerably greater than anything hitherto
recorded. * * * As the filaments arose, they gradually faded away
like a dissolving cloud, and at a quarter past one only a few filmy
wisps, with some brighter streamers low down near the
chromatosphere, remained to mark the place. But in the mean while
the little 'thunder-head' before alluded to had grown and developed
wonderfully into a mass of rolling and ever-changing flame, to speak
according to appearances. First, it was crowded down, as it were,
along the solar surface; later, it arose almost pyramidally 50,000
miles in height; then [Page 88] its summit was drawn down into long
filaments and threads, which were most curiously rolled backward and
forward, like the volutes of an Ionic capital, and finally faded
away, and by half-past two had vanished like the other. The whole
phenomenon suggested most forcibly the idea of an explosion under
the great prominence, acting mainly upward, but also in all
directions outward; and then, after an interval, followed by a
corresponding in-rush."
No language can convey nor mind conceive an idea of the fierce
commotion we here contemplate. If we call these movements hurricanes,
we must remember that what we use as a figure moves but one hundred
miles an hour, while these move one hundred miles a second. Such
storms of fire on earth, "coming down upon us from the north, would,
in thirty seconds after they had crossed the St. Lawrence, be in
the Gulf of Mexico, carrying with them the whole surface of the
continent in a mass not simply of ruins but of glowing vapor, in
which the vapors arising from the dissolution of the materials
composing the cities of Boston, New York, and Chicago would be
mixed in a single indistinguishable cloud." In the presence of
these evident visions of an actual body in furious flame, we need
hesitate no longer in accepting as true the words of St. Peter
of the time "in which the [atmospheric] heavens shall pass away
with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat;
the earth also, and the works that are therein, shall be burned
up."
This region of discontinuous flame below the corona is called the
chromosphere. Hydrogen is the principal material of its upper part;
iron, magnesium, and other [Page 89] metals, some of them as yet
unknown on earth, but having a record in the spectrum, in the denser
parts below. If these fierce fires are a part of the Sun, as they
assuredly are, its diameter would be from 1,060,000 to 1,260,000
miles.
Let us approach even nearer. We see a clearly recognized even disk,
of equal dimensions in every direction. This is the photosphere.
We here reach some definitely measurable data for estimating its
visible size. We already know its distance. Its disk subtends an
angle of 32' 12".6, or a little more than half a degree. Three
hundred and sixty such suns, laid side by side, would span the
celestial arch from east to west with a half circle of light. Two
lines drawn from our earth at the angle mentioned would be 860,000
miles apart at the distance of 92,500,000 miles. This, then, is
the diameter of the visible and measurable part of the sun. It
would require one hundred and eight globes like the earth in a line
to measure the sun's diameter, and three hundred and thirty-nine,
to be strung like the beads of a necklace, to encircle his waist.
The sun has a volume equal to 1,245,000 earths, but being only
one-quarter as dense, it has a mass of only 326,800 earths. It
has seven hundred times the mass of all the planets, asteroids,
and satellites put together. Thus it is able to control them all
by its greater power of attraction.
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