This conviction had been confirmed largely by the success of American astronomers in observing the eclipse of 1878 from high elevations.The report made to the Academy received immediate response. Since 1876, the chateau of Meudon, left in ruins by the Prussians, has had its walls patched with rough red bricks, its open roof topped by a mammoth dome, and has been used as an observatory by the eminent French astronomer Janssen, and the remnant of the ancient lodge has been his home.Meudon has, however, a still nearer interest for us here than the fact that it is the home and, in a sense, the monument of M. Janssen. En 1936, des expériences de psychométrie sont faites sur les membres de l’expédition française au Hidden Peak, avant leur départ pour le Karakoram (thèse du docteur Jean Carle). The question was serious.Science has predicted that one day the fires of the sun will cool. The rectangular base is about thirty-three feet long by fifteen feet wide. It was possible that the cover-lid of snow was over forty feet in thickness; or that, if it was not, the gallery had passed between two needles. Janssen resolved to find out if this lot was awaiting the earth; if her future was to be cut short by a veil of vapor. In 1867 he had worked on Etna and the Picdes Acores. The far horizon alone was veiled by a light fog. The discoveries which have just been made on oxygen will permit us to search for the presence of this vital gas.When these investigations are finished; when science shall have determined rigorously the astronomic conditions in which each planet is placed; when she shall have fixed the geological period, the chemical constitution, of the star, the nature of the gases which form “It is a fine problem that we are on the point of solving: perhaps the highest that human intelligence has ever proposed.”Still more inspiring is it to see how the solution of one question suggests that of others; how the means necessary for one can be utilized for others; how surely human knowledge rises by the patient persistence of men in answering the one question which has come to them with particular force, and for which science so far has had no answer. A glance at the map of the expeditions he has made, reconciles one still further to the idea. Here he may unwind the cyclones and chain the lightnings.But by far the most fascinating study that will be pursued at the new observatory has reference to the planets.
In August, 1891, the engineer M. Janssen was not surprised at the result.
The “field” for the observer in this novel situation is of an immense extent; a view whose diameter is about three hundred miles, and which includes the sunny plains of Lombardy, long stretches of the basins of the Rhone and the Rhine, the snowy mountains of Central Switzerland, all Dauphind, the Jura, the Vosges.
The walls, windows, and doors are double. Says he, “ During the winter I piled up, in one of the courts at Meudon, as high as the first story, a little mountain of snow. It was packed so as to give it the same density as that which covers Mt. The results confirmed those reached before. When he reached his post he learned that the English astronomers had asked that he be allowed to leave the city, and that the Prussians were about to grant the permission.Only such a record is sufficient to explain his ascent of Mt. And a scientist will tell him that, whenever a beam of light passes through a gas, certain of its rays are absorbed, and that the spectrum of the beam shows, in the place of the absorbed rays, certain dark lines. His attention was soon turned almost exclusively to oxygen. This latter contains, we know, great quantities of hydrogen. Blanc in 1890. If he found that the lines grew paler, or disappeared, and that the degree of the diminution in intensity and in number corresponded to the difference in the quantity of oxygen in the earth's atmosphere at and below the point of observation, then he would be justified in concluding that, in reaching the limits of the envelope (the earth's atmosphere), all the lines would disappear from the spectrum, and that, consequently, the atmosphere of the sun contained no oxygen.It was in October, 1888, that the first experiment was made. That is, he resolved to find out the origin of the oxygen lines in the solar spectrum.
The idea was bold, but reflection convinced him that it was practicable. The observer can watch over all this vast expanse the formation, movements, and disappearance of clouds, and the effects upon them of pressure, damp, electricity.