SUN TORNADOES PHOTOGRAPHED.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1626, 18 December 1912, Page 8

SUN TORNADOES PHOTOGRAPHED.

' ..During, the course of her lecture on Thursday'evening, at the Town Hall, Miss Mary Proctor will make special mention of the work at the Solar Observatory, at Mount Wilson, in Southern California, under the direction, of Professor G. E. Hale. She will show.photographs he has obtained of the, sun, indicating solar 'storms taking place in the high 'levels of ."the sun's atmosphere.,. It,was discovered many years- ago by observations made during total eclipses, that the sun has an extensive atmosphere, rising many thousands of miles above its surface. May it not be that in this atmosphere, which is quite invisible as we look through it .at the surface -of the; sun, thero • are winds and 'storms similar to those we experience on the Earth?

This is the problem Professor Hale set himself to solve, meeting with marvellous success, by means'of an, invention of his own called the spectvoheliograph. With this instrument he has been enabled to obtain photographs of the sun in the light of its own luminous elements. It is.possible, by means, of it,' for instance, to obtain a 1 negative showing the'-sun iii the'tight; of calcium.'' The result is a view of the solar atmosphere at the particular stratum or level where calcium is in combustion, showing calcium clouds- resembling; snowflakes strewn over a grey cloth. Experiments were also made with the violet light of hydrogen, photographs taken with this light revealing tho presence of hydrogen clouds in a still higher layer of tho sun's atmosphere, but it was not until 1903, that attempts were made to picture the sun with the red light of hydrogen. The result was startling, for a hitherto, unexplored region of tho sun was now revealed, and it is here that tho whirling 3torms which give rise 'to, sun.spots take place..