AN IMPORTANT SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XXXXII, Issue 94, 3 May 1900, Page 2

AN IMPORTANT SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY.

[By Electric Telegraph.- Copyright [PUB PBBSB ASSOCIATION.] Received 2,7 p.m. London, May 1, A gigantic telescope has bean erected in Paris, which reveals flames (or prominences) on the sun's surface, which hitherto w«re only perceptible on its edge. [ln 1706 Captain Stannyan, during an eclipse of the sun, observed that juit before the limb of the sun appeared after totality there was a blood-red streak. Such appearances were subsequently noticed, but it was not until 1842 that they were first scientifically described as flames, or protuberances or prominences. Investigation by means of the spectroscope showed that these appearances were mostly due to enormous masses of glowing hydrogen gas floating above the sun in some upper atmosphere, as the clouds do in ours. It has since been ascertained that these phenomena can be,observed by means of the spectroscope without an eclipse. There is now in use an instrument called a telespectroscope, I whereby the contour of the prominence is seen as well as its spectrum. In the region outside that in which the prominences appear jets of chromospheric hydrogen have been observed to reach a height of 200,000 miles in twenty minutes and disappear altogether within half-an-hour. Possibly the new Parisian' monster telescope may disclose many features new to science,]