The New Heavens

The New Heavens, by George
Ellery Hale

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Title: The New Heavens
Author: George Ellery Hale
Release Date: September 28, 2006 [EBook #19395]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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Produced by Robert J. Hall

[Illustration: Fig. 1. The Constellation of Orion (Hubble).
Photographed with a small camera lens of 1 inch aperture and 5 inches
focal length. The three bright stars in the centre of the picture form the
belt of Orion. Just below, in the sword handle, is an irregular white

patch about one-eighth of an inch in diameter. This is a small-scale
image of the great nebula in Orion, shown on a larger scale in Fig. 2.]

THE NEW HEAVENS
BY
GEORGE ELLERY HALE
DIRECTOR OF THE MOUNT WILSON OBSERVATORY OF THE
CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON
WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1922

TO MY WIFE

PREFACE
Fourteen years ago, in a book entitled "The Study of Stellar Evolution"
(University of Chicago Press, 1908), I attempted to give in untechnical
language an account of some modern methods of astrophysical research.
This book is now out of print, and the rapid progress of science has left
it completely out of date. As I have found no opportunity to prepare a
new edition, or to write another book of similar purpose, I have adopted
the simpler expedient of contributing occasional articles on recent
developments to Scribner's Magazine, three of which are included in
the present volume.

I am chiefly indebted, for the illustrations, to the Mount Wilson
Observatory and the present and former members of its staff whose
names appear in the captions. Special thanks are due to Mr. Ferdinand
Ellerman, who made all of the photographs of the observatory
buildings and instruments, and prepared all material for reproduction.
The cut of the original Cavendish apparatus is copied from the
Philosophical Transactions for 1798 with the kind permission of the
Royal Society, and I am also indebted to the Royal Society and to
Professor Fowler and Father Cortie for the privilege of reproducing
from the Proceedings two illustrations of their spectroscopic results.
G. E. H.
January, 1922.

CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
THE NEW HEAVENS II. GIANT STARS III. COSMIC CRUCIBLES

ILLUSTRATIONS
FIG. 1. The Constellation of Orion (Hubble) 2. The Great Nebula in
Orion (Pease) 3. Model by Ellerman of summit of Mount Wilson,
showing the observatory buildings among the trees and bushes 4. The
100-inch Hooker telescope 5. Erecting the polar axis of the 100-inch
telescope 6. Lowest section of tube of 100-inch telescope, ready to
leave Pasadena for Mount Wilson 7. Section of a steel girder for dome
covering the 100-inch telescope, on its way up Mount Wilson 8.
Erecting the steel building and revolving dome that cover the Hooker
telescope 9. Building and revolving dome, 100 feet in diameter,
covering the 100-inch Hooker telescope 10. One-hundred-inch mirror,
just silvered, rising out of the silvering-room in pier before attachment
to lower end of telescope tube. (Seen above) 11. The driving-clock and

worm-gear that cause the 100-inch Hooker telescope to follow the stars
12. Large irregular nebula and star cluster in Sagittarius (Duncan) 13.
Faint spiral nebula in the constellation of the Hunting Dogs (Pease) 14.
Spiral nebula in Andromeda, seen edge on (Ritchey) 15. Photograph of
the moon made on September 15, 1919, with the 100-inch Hooker
telescope (Pease) 16. Photograph of the moon made on September 15,
1919, with the 100-inch Hooker telescope (Pease) 17. Hubble's
Variable Nebula. One of the few nebulæ known to vary in brightness
and form 18. Ring Nebula in Lyra, photographed with the 60-inch
(Ritchey) and 100-inch (Duncan) telescopes 19. Gaseous prominence at
the sun's limb, 140,000 miles high (Ellerman) 20. The sun, 865,000
miles in diameter, from a direct photograph showing many sun-spots
(Whitney) 21. Great sun-spot group, August 8, 1917 (Whitney) 22.
Photograph of the hydrogen atmosphere of the sun (Ellerman) 23.
Diagram showing outline of the 100-inch Hooker telescope, and path of
the two pencils of light from a star when under observation with the
20-foot Michelson interferometer 24. Twenty-foot Michelson
interferometer for measuring star diameters, attached to upper end of
the skeleton tube of the 100-inch Hooker telescope 25. The giant
Betelgeuse (within the circle), familiar as the conspicuous red star in
the right shoulder of Orion (Hubble) 26. Arcturus (within the white
circle), known to the Arabs as the "Lance Bearer," and to the Chinese