The Spectrum

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6

N.B. These and those that follow are hand-drawn spectragrams

Slide 46

Comparing stellar spectra

Rutherfurd (1863)

Slide 47

Comparing stellar spectra

Greenwich Observatory (1863)

Slide 48

William Huggins

1824-1910

Slide 49

English amateur Astronomer

Semi-pro might be a better term

Amateur at that time did not mean someone without considerable skills

Non-professionals discovered several moons around Saturn and Uranus

Huggins didn’t start observing until he was 30

He closed the family shop in London and moved back in with his parents in Upper Tulse Hill

Slide 50

Title page of Huggin’s lab notebook #1

Slide 51

For several years he worked in his observatory on Tulse Hill outside London

But Huggins grew dissatisfied with the positional focus of 19th century Astronomy

Slide 52

Epiphany

“It was just about this time … that the news reached me of Kirchhoff's great discovery of the true nature and the chemical constitution of the sun from his interpretation of the Fraunhofer lines….”

He later wrote: .This news was to me like the coming upon a spring of water in a dry and thirsty land. Here at last presented itself the very order of work for which in an indefinite way I was looking….

Slide 53

William Allen Miller (1817-1870)

Trained as a chemist

Founding member of the Chemical Society

Treasurer and VP of the Royal Society

Started collaborating with Huggins in 1862

Both were members of the Royal Astronomical Society

The two jointly won the Gold Medal in 1867 for their work on stellar spectra

Slide 54

Worked to improve prismatic analysis with the goal of identification of elements

Induction apparatus to examine metallic spectra

Slide 55

Huggins’

star-spectroscope

Slide 56

Huggins’ High Dispersion Spectrascope

Slide 57

Comparing stellar spectra