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FIG. 18.—“THE PLUME” SPOT OF MARCH 5 AND 6, 1873. (FROM AN ORIGINAL DRAWING BY S.P. LANGLEY.)

The photograph has transported us already so near the sun’s surface that we have seen details there invisible to the naked eye. We have seen that what we have called “spots” are indeed regions whose actual vastness surpasses the vague immensity of a dream, and it will not cause surprise that in them is a temperature which also surpasses greatly that of the hottest furnace. We shall see later, in fact, that the whole surface is composed largely of metals turned into vapor in this heat, and that if we could indeed drop our great globe itself upon the sun, it would be dissipated as a snow-flake. Now, we cannot suppose this great space is fully described when we have divided it into the penumbra, umbra, and nucleus, or that the little photograph has shown us all there is, and we rather anticipate that these great spaces must be filled with curious things, if we could get near enough to see them. We cannot advantageously enlarge our photograph further; but if we could really come closer, we should have the nearer view that the work at Allegheny, I have just alluded to, now affords. The drawing (Fig.15) of the central part of the same great spot, already cited, was made on the 21st of September, 1870, and may be compared with the photograph of that day. We have now a greatly more magnified view than before, but it is not blurred by the magnifying, and is full of detail. We have been brought within two hundred thousand miles of the sun, or rather less than the actual distance of the moon, and are seeing for ourselves what was a few years since thought out of the reach of any observer. See how full of intricate forms that void, black, umbral space in the photograph has become! The penumbra is filled with detail of the strangest kind, and there are two great “bridges,” as they are called, which are almost wholly invisible in the photograph. Notice the line in one of the bridges which follows its sinuosities through its whole length of twelve thousand miles, making us suspect that it is made up of smaller parts as a rope is made up of cords (as, in fact, it is); and look at the end, where the cords themselves are unravelled into threads fine as threads of silk, and these again resolved into finer fibres, till in more and more web-like fineness it passes beyond the reach of sight! I am speaking, however, here rather of the wonderful original, as I so well remember it, than of what my sketch or even the engraver’s skill can render.