Abstract
IT is always difficult to condense in a few lines the essence of the work accomplished during a year at the Mount Wilson Solar Observatory. The report for the past year, just issued by the director, is a concentrated essence by itself, and as it covers forty-five pages the difficulty of the task will at once be grasped. The director commences the report by summarising the principal results obtained during the year, and the brief paragraphs which compose this summary, each of which is practically restricted to an important piece of research work, number no fewer than seventy-two. Space does not permit one to refer even to the more important of these, but many have already received notice from time to time in our astronomical column, and are therefore familiar to our astronomical readers. Perhaps the most important result is that concerning the magnetism of the sun. Observations of the Zeeman effect at various solar latitudes have indicated that the sun is a magnet, and that the magnetic poles are at or near the poles of rotation. Further, the polarity of the sun corresponds with that of the earth, a conclusion, as the director, Prof. Hale, remarks, which may prove to have an important bearing on theories of terrestrial magnetism. The first approximate value for the vertical intensity of the sun's general field at the poles is given as 50 gausses, which is about one-hundredth of the intensity of the most powerful sun-spot fields, and about eighty times that of the earth's field.
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The Mount Wilson Solar Observatory . Nature 93, 201 (1914). https://doi.org/10.1038/093201a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/093201a0