How William Huggins shaped astrophysics
Saperaud (Wikipedia)/Cepheiden (Wikipedia)
In 1802, William Hyde Wollaston observed dark lines in the Sun’s spectrum. Joseph von Fraunhofer, for whom the lines are named, plotted more than 500 of these lines beginning in 1814. The brightest are denoted by the letters A through G; these dark lines represent absorption of light by elements in the Sun’s atmosphere. Similar absorption lines appear in the spectra of other stars.
Harvard University, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Ernst Mayr Library; Google
Page from The Intellectual Observer journal reviews information about spectroscopes and Doppler’s theory.
Page from Répertoire d’Optique Moderne by Abbé Moigno reviews information about spectroscopes and Doppler’s theory.
Engraving by Joseph Swain, published in An Atlas of representative stellar spectra by William Huggins and Margaret Lindsay Huggins, 1899
This engraving depicts Huggins’ observatory around the time he was working on his line-of-sight measurements. The print was created years later, likely based on Huggins’ description of his observatory and its setup from memory.
Sirius is a hot blue star 8.6 light-years from Earth. It is the brightest star in the sky, making it a tempting target for Huggins to observe using his spectroscope in 1868.
Courtesy of Wellesley College Library, Special Collections
Pages from Huggins’ personal observing notebooks record his measurements of Sirius’ Fraunhofer F line on two different nights in 1868, as well as the great care he took to reproduce his results over the course of a single night and on different nights of observation.
Courtesy of Wellesley College Library, Special Collections
Pages from Huggins’ personal observing notebooks record his measurements of Sirius’ Fraunhofer F line on two different nights in 1868, as well as the great care he took to reproduce his results over the course of a single night and on different nights of observation.
