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
8 - Spectral classification: From the Henry Draper Catalogue to the MK system and beyond
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
The first International Astronomical Union meeting in Rome, May 1922
Solar Union in Bonn in 1913 Frank Schlesinger had been able to conclude, as a result of the questionnaire [1] to 28 prominent spectroscopists from the Committee on the Classification of Stellar Spectra, that ‘… the preference for the Draper classification is nearly unanimous, but… the general feeling among investigators is opposed at the present time of any system as a permanent one’ [2]. (The ISU questionnaire of 1911 is discussed in Section 5.10.)
In practice 1913 represents the point when the Harvard system was universally adopted. Nine years later, at the first meeting of the newly formed International Astronomical Union (IAU) in Rome, in May 1922, the earlier temporary acceptance of this system was formally and unanimously approved as permanent. The chairman of the Spectral Classification Committee was then Walter Adams. By this time six volumes of the Henry Draper Catalogue had been published and the classification of nearly a quarter of a million stars had been completed by Annie Cannon six years previously. The adoption of the Harvard system was therefore no longer an issue: the Adams report prescribed that ‘the Draper Classification or “Harvard System” … should be the basis on which any further extensions should be built. Classification on other and different systems should be abandoned permanently’ [3], although it was conceded that in ‘cases of great uncertainty Secchi's types may be employed’.
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- Information
- The Analysis of StarlightTwo Centuries of Astronomical Spectroscopy, pp. 152 - 192Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014