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CECILIA PAYNE-GAPOSCHKIN
It was while studying at Newnham College, Cambridge, in 1919 that her interest in astronomy was ignited by a lecture from Sir Arthur Eddington on Einstein’s new science of general relativity. Determined to follow her newfound passion after leaving Cambridge, she applied to Harvard College Observatory. Alongside images of the sky, the Observatory’s catalogue also included the spectra of countless stars, made by spreading out starlight according to its wavelength and capturing it on photographic plates. These rainbow-like bands were usually crossed by a variety of dark ‘absorption lines’ – chemical fingerprints created by the light-absorbing properties of various elements somehow associated with the stars themselves. The goal of her PhD thesis would be to explain exactly how.
One of the most puzzling aspects of stellar spectra was the huge variety in the strength and number of their absorption lines, implying great variation in the elements they contained – by proper application of the equation, Cecilia was able to show that most of this variety was due to differences in the surface temperature of the stars, not to their composition. Higher temperatures strip away more of the electrons from around atoms in a star’s atmosphere, leaving ‘ions’ with increasingly positive electric charges that interact differently with light escaping from the star’s surface.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة Issue 144 من All About Space UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
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هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة Issue 144 من All About Space UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
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LONG AGO, A LAKE ON MARS MAY HAVE BEEN SPRAWLING WITH MICROBES
Curiosity discovered manganese oxide in bedrock in a Martian region that may have been a shoreline billions of years ago
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MOON TOUR HELL
Finding this fascinating crater isnt as hard as its name suggests...
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THIS MONTH'S PLANETS
Most of the planets are tricky targets this month, but our guide will help you locate them
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UNIVERSE BEFORE TIME
Could the existence of a mirror-image cosmos before the Big Bang solve some of the biggest mysteries in astronomy?
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CLIMATE CHANGE IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM
Alongside Earth, our planetary neighbourhood is changing, but it’s not for the better…
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Stars give tiny planets a gravitational 'squeeze' to strip away their atmospheres
A scientist has learned more about the violent processes that rip atmospheres away from planets, finding that squashing and squeezing by a parent star can contribute to this process.
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The Milky Way's halo is filled with ‘magnetic doughnuts' as wide as 100,000 light years
The outer halo of the Milky Way is filled with magnetic fields that take the shape of vast doughnuts with diameters ranging from 12,000 to 100,000 light years, with the heart of our galaxy at their centre.
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The Pentagon wants the commercial space reserve to support military satellites in orbit
The US Department of Defense is developing a plan to use the ever-growing American commercial space industry for national security purposes.
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DOES A COSMIC 'GLITCH' IN GRAVITY CHALLENGE ALBERT EINSTEIN'S GREATEST THEORY?
Gravity changes once you reach a cosmic scale
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DEEP SKY CHALLENGE : STELLAR TREASURES OF THE ARCHER AND SCORPION
Summer skies are stuffed full of amazing objects for your telescope - if you're prepared to stay up late