Abstract
NOVA (T) AURIGÆ SPECTRUM.—In the current number of the Astronomischen Nachrichten (No. 3189) Mr. W. W. Campbell communicates his observations of the spectrum of Nova Aurigæ since its reappearance in August. At this time the continuous spectrum was very faint, the spectrum consisted of isolated bright lines, and the three brightest lines had the intensities and positions of the characteristic nebular lines, the result being that the spectrum of this new star was announced to be that of a planetary nebula. That this view has not been universally adopted is shown by Vogel's paper on the same star, and he inclines to the opinion that the bright lines are chromospheric, and that the brightest line is not the nebula line. In the present paper Mr. Campbell has made more visual and long exposure photographic observations of nebular spectra, and finds no less than five other lines which are in the spectrum of the new star. The nebulæ he uses here for comparison are: Orion, G.C. 4390, N.G.C. 7027, G.C. 4954, G.C. 4373, and in the photographs of their spectrum he obtains 12, 12, 7, 10, and 5, lines respectively that appear to him to be new. Tne tabulated list of lines brings out very clearly, that with the exception of the line 451, the identity of which is uncertain in these nebulæ, the Nova lines are matched perfectly in one or more of them., allowing for the fact that they (the Nova lines) were shifted about five-tenth metres (in August and November, 1892) towards the violet. The Nova spectrum, as Mr. Campbell says, “certainly differs no more from the nebular spectra than the nebular spectra differ from each other.” As for the lines, 4857;, 4336, 4098, and 396 are the well-known hydrogen lines; 5002, 4953, the first and second nebular lines, while all the others correspond well with the nebular lines. The presence of these four hydrogen lines and the chromospheric line 4472, strengthens as he says, his argument, and he concludes with the words that “if the spectrum is not conceded to be nebular, I must ask what else we should expect in that spectrum if it were nebular?”
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Our Astronomical Column. Nature 48, 524 (1893). https://doi.org/10.1038/048524a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/048524a0