Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the second edition
- Preface to the first edition, 1986
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction to spectroscopy, spectroscopes and spectrographs
- 2 The analysis of sunlight: the earliest pioneers
- 3 The foundations of spectral analysis: from Fraunhofer to Kirchhoff
- 4 Early pioneers in stellar spectroscopy
- 5 Spectral classification at Harvard
- 6 The Doppler effect
- 7 The interpretation of stellar spectra and the birth of astrophysics
- 8 Spectral classification: From the Henry Draper Catalogue to the MK system and beyond
- 9 Spectroscopy of peculiar stars
- 10 Quantitative analysis of stellar spectra
- 11 Some miscellaneous topics in stellar spectroscopy: individual stars of note, stellar chromospheres, interstellar lines and ultraviolet spectroscopy from space
- Figure sources and acknowledgements
- Appendix A List of solar lines designated by letters by Fraunhofer and others
- Appendix B Vogel's first spectral classification scheme of 1874
- Index of names
- Index of star names
- Index of spectral lines
- Index of subjects
- References
4 - Early pioneers in stellar spectroscopy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the second edition
- Preface to the first edition, 1986
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction to spectroscopy, spectroscopes and spectrographs
- 2 The analysis of sunlight: the earliest pioneers
- 3 The foundations of spectral analysis: from Fraunhofer to Kirchhoff
- 4 Early pioneers in stellar spectroscopy
- 5 Spectral classification at Harvard
- 6 The Doppler effect
- 7 The interpretation of stellar spectra and the birth of astrophysics
- 8 Spectral classification: From the Henry Draper Catalogue to the MK system and beyond
- 9 Spectroscopy of peculiar stars
- 10 Quantitative analysis of stellar spectra
- 11 Some miscellaneous topics in stellar spectroscopy: individual stars of note, stellar chromospheres, interstellar lines and ultraviolet spectroscopy from space
- Figure sources and acknowledgements
- Appendix A List of solar lines designated by letters by Fraunhofer and others
- Appendix B Vogel's first spectral classification scheme of 1874
- Index of names
- Index of star names
- Index of spectral lines
- Index of subjects
- References
Summary
Stellar spectroscopy before 1860
Fraunhofer first observed stellar spectra in 1814. Using his 2.5-cm aperture theodolite telescope, he found three broad stripes in the spectrum of Sirius [1]. Nine years later, with his 10-cm refractor he described the lines he saw in Sirius, Castor, Pollux, Capella, Betelgeuse and Procyon [2]. The main result from this work was that stars have dark absorption lines in their spectra, yet that the lines present differ from star to star. Sirius, for example, with its three strong lines, was quite dissimilar to sunlight, while Betelgeuse displayed countless lines in its spectrum, some of which corresponded in position to the solar lines (see Chapter 2).
It is perhaps remarkable that the first pioneer to explore line spectra of any source at all systematically should have included stellar spectra in his observations. After Fraunhofer, no significant work was undertaken in stellar spectroscopy for 40 years. It is also surprising that these decades that saw so much activity in solar and laboratory spectroscopy should have seen practically no continuation of the spectroscopic work on stars that Fraunhofer had initiated.
Fraunhofer's 1823 paper describes his objective prism mounted on the 10-cm telescope. One of the few references to stellar spectroscopic observations in the intervening four decades came in 1838 from the Scottish-born German astronomer Johann (John) von Lamont (1805–79), who was then director of the Royal Observatory in Munich [3]. Lamont set up Fraunhofer's apparatus again, and observed spectra of some of the brightest stars.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Analysis of StarlightTwo Centuries of Astronomical Spectroscopy, pp. 33 - 62Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014