Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Nov 1891
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1891natur..45....8m&link_type=abstract
Nature, Volume 45, Issue 1149, pp. 8 (1891).
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
MISS CLERKE, in her very interesting article (NATURE, vol. xliv. p. 572) on the motion of the sun in space, seems to think that we have only the two alternatives of supposing that the brightness of a star is independent of its distance, or that the motions of the stars increase with their distance. I suspect that, when the proper motions of all stars down to the 9th magnitude have been tabulated, the necessity of adopting either alternative will disappear. My object in writing this letter, however, is to call the attention of spectroscopists to the question thus raised. The spectroscope, when used in connection with a powerful telescope, ought to be able to show whether the fainter stars as a rule move more rapidly in the line of sight than the brighter ones; for if the average motion in the line of sight is the same in both cases, astronomers will be slow to accept an explanation of phenomena which supposes a different average velocity on the whole. But even instruments incapable of deciding this question may throw light on the subject. It now appears certain that if a Sirian and a solar star of the same mass were placed at the same distance from us, the Sirian star would appear more than one magnitude brighter. Hence, before we can use magnitudes as in any sense a test of distance, we must ascertain the relative proportion of Sirian and solar stars in the groups which we are comparing. It would also be very desirable that the magnitudes of the stars employed by Profs. Eastman, Boss, and Stumpe, should be photometrically determined. The photometer has at all events the advantage over the eye that its results are in all cases (allowing for errors of observation) comparable.
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