Spectrum Analysis in its Application to Terrestrial Substances, and the Physical Constitution of the Heavenly Bodies

Abstract

It is not difficult to deliver interesting lectures or to write an instructive book on spectrum analysis. The rapid succession of brilliant discoveries in this new branch of science, the amount of fundamental facts added by it to human knowledge, especially in the field of the cosmical world, assure the lecturer or writer appealing to the intelligent but not scientific public of useful and legitimate success. But what is not so easy to do is to interest at the same time the gens du monde and scientific men, by offering a selection of the most recent discoveries in a bright and literary form attractive to the former, and yet keeping for the latter the appearance of precision, and exactness of the numerical results.

Spectrum Analysis in its Application to Terrestrial Substances, and the Physical Constitution of the Heavenly Bodies.

By Dr. H. Schellen, Director der Realschule, I.O. Cologne. Translated from the second enlarged and revised German edition by Jane and Caroline Lassell, edited, with notes, by W. Huggins, LL.D., D.C.L., F.R.S. (Longman and Co., 1872.)