Huggins, Maxwell, 1868 //Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 158 (1868)

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exact coincidence could not be obtained. We considered these bands to agree precisely in position with the bands corresponding to them in the spectrum of the spark.

The apparent identity of the spectrum of the comet with that of carbon rests not only on the coincidence of position in the spectrum of the bands, but also upon the very remarkable resemblance of the corresponding bands in their general characters, and in their relative brightness. This is very noticeable in the middle band, where the gradation of brightness is not uniform. This band in both spectra remained of nearly equal brightness for the same proportion of its length.

On a subsequent evening, June 25, I repeated these comparisons, when the former observations were fully confirmed in every particular. On this evening I compared the brightest band with that of carbon in the larger spectroscope, which gives a dispersion of about five prisms.

The remarkably close resemblance of the spectrum of the comet to the spectrum of carbon necessarily suggests the identity of the substances by which in both cases the light was emitted.

It may be well to state that some phosphorescent and fluorescent bodies give discontinuous spectra in which the light is restricted to certain ranges of refrangibility. There are, however, several considerations which seem to oppose the idea that the light of comets can be of a phosphorescent character. Phosphorescent bodies are usually so highly reflective that the phosphorescence emitted by them is not seen so long as they are exposed to light. This comet was still in the full glare of the sun, and yet the continuous spectrum corresponding to reflected solar light was of extreme feebleness compared with the three bright bands which we have under consideration. The phenomenon of phosphorescence seems to be restricted to bodies in the solid state, a condition which is not apparently in accordance with certain phenomena which have been observed in large comets, such as the outflow of the matter of the nucleus, and the formation of successive envelopes.

There are, indeed, some phenomena of fluorescence, such as that of a nearly transparent liquid becoming an object of some brightness by means of the property which it possesses of absorbing the nearly invisible rays of the spectrum, and dispersing them in a degraded and much more luminous form, which are less obviously inconsistent with cometary phenomena than are those of phosphorescence.

The violent commotions and internal changes which we witness in comets when near the sun seem, however, to connect the great brightness which they then assume more closely with that part of the solar force we call heat. There is also to be considered the fact of the polarized condition of the light of the tail and some parts of the comae of comets, which shows that a part of their light is reflected.

The observations of the spectrum of Comet II. contained in this paper, which show that its light was identical with that emitted by highly heated vapour of carbon, appear to be almost decisive of the nature of cometary light. The great fixity of carbon seems indeed to raise some difficulty in the way of accepting the apparently obvious inference

of these prismatic observations. Some comets have approached the sun sufficiently near to acquire a temperature high enough to convert even carbon into vapour*. Indeed for these comets a body of great fixity seems to be necessary. In the case of comets which have been submitted to a less fierce glare of solar heat, it may be suggested that this supposed difficulty is one of degree only; for we do not know of any conditions under which even a gas, permanent at the temperature of the earth, could maintain sufficient heat to emit light, a state of things which appears to exist permanently in the case of the gaseous nebulae.

If the substance of the comet be taken to be pure carbon, it would appear probable that the nucleus had been condensed from the gaseous state in which it existed at some former period. It would therefore probably consist of carbon in a state of excessively minute division. In such a form it would be able to take in nearly the whole of the sun’s energy, and thus acquire more speedily a temperature high enough for its conversion into vapour. In the liquid or gaseous state, or in a continuous solid state, this substance appears, from Dr. Tyndall’s researches, to be diathermanous. Still, under the most favourable of known conditions, the solar heat, to which the majority of comets are subjected, would seem to be inadequate to the production of luminous vapour of carbon.

It should be stated that olefiant gas when burnt in air may give a similar spectrum of shaded bands. If the gas be ignited at the orifice of the tube from which it issues, the flame is brilliantly white, and gives a continuous spectrum. When a jet of air is directed through the flame it becomes less luminous, and of a greenish-blue colour. The spectrum is now no longer continuous, but exhibits the bands distinctive of carbon. Under these circumstances, for obvious reasons, the bright lines of the hydrogen spectrum are not seen. In this way a spectrum resembling that of the comet may be obtained, with the difference that the fourth more refrangible band, which was not seen in the cometic spectrum, is stronger relatively to the other bands, than is the case when the spark is taken in olefiant gas. If we were to conceive the comet to consist of a compound of carbon and hydrogen, we should diminish in some degree the necessity for the excessively high temperature which pure carbon appears to require for its conversion into luminous vapour ; but other difficulties would arise in connexion with the decomposition we must then suppose to take place; for we have no evidence, I believe, that olefiant gas or any other known compound of carbon can furnish this peculiar spectrum of shaded bands without undergoing decomposition. If, indeed, it were allowable to suppose a state of combustion, with oxygen or some other element, set up by the solar heat, we should have an explanation of a possible source of a degree of heat sufficient to render the cometary matter luminous, and which the sun’s heat would be directly inadequate to produce.

* The comet of* 1843 “ approached the luminous surface of the sun within about a seventh part of the sun’s radius. The heat to which the comet was subjected (a glare as that of 47,000 suns, such as we experience the warmth of) surpassed that in the focus of Parker’s great lens in the proportion of 24J to 1 without, or 3| to 1 with the concentrating lens. Yet that lens so used melted cornelian, agate, and rock-crystal.”—Sir John Herschel, Outlines of Astronomy, 7th edit. p. 401.

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