620 
NATURE 
[ArxiL 28, 1904 
OUR ASTRONOMICAL COLUMN. 
ASTRONOMICAL OCCURRENCES IN May :— 
May 1-6. Epoch of Aquarid meteoric shower (Radiant 338° — 
Ba, 
2. 16h. 50m. Inferior conjunction of Jupiter’s Sat. IV. 
(Callisto). 
9. Neptune 10’ south of « Geminorum (Mag. 3:2). 
> Saturn. Major axis of outer ring = 38’’'98, minor axis 
=9'"'09. 
12. 1h. Moon in conjunction with Jupiter. Jupiter 
o° 44’ N. 
15. Venus. Illuminated portion of disc=o'969, of Mars 
=0°999. 
16. Pallas in opposition to the Sun (Pallas Mag. 8). 
20. 10h. 52m. Minimum of Algol (8 Persei). 
21. gh. rm. to gh. 26m. Moon occults o Leonis (Mag. 
3°8). 
30. 6h. Mars in conjunction with the Sun. 
Comet 1904 a.—Circular No. 65 from the Kiel Central- 
stelle contains a telegram received from Prof. Pickering, 
who announces that the comet 1904 a was photographed 
at Harvard on March 11 and 15, and April 1, 5, 13 and 16, 
and also gives the coordinates for those dates. He further 
gives the following set of elliptic elements, and an 
ephemeris, calculated by Messrs. Curtiss, Albrecht, and 
Leuschner from observations made on April 17, 18 
and 19 :— 
Epoch 1904 April 18-62 Greenwich. 
M=159 8 q@ =1°7177 
ow =258 57 é€ =0'1773 
8 =272 13 Wi=3202 
# =126 39 
Ephemeris 12h. G.M.T. 
1904 a 6 Brightness 
ly he GR Lae 
Aprili2tey lesen tonag 32 47.13 0-98 
AS ccd) UT Bt 49 30 
20m yl OMTOMES 51 34 
May 3 15 59 44 53 22 0°88 
The comet was observed on April 19 and 20 by Herren 
Wirtz and Becker respectively, who determined the follow- 
ing positions :— 
RSs bare) a 6 Mag. 
» m. = 4 ° ’ “ 
Aprilig ... 9 11°3 252 44 56 AGS Sols nr 
ZO pee LS 7A 251 56 I 46 35 38 9°3 
ELEMENTS AND EPHEMERIS FOR Wo tr’s Comet (1884 III.). 
—The following elements for Wolf’s comet (1884 III.), 
corrected for the planetary perturbations up to the epoch 
June 12, 1904, are given by Herr A. Berberich in No. 3940 
of the Astronomische Nachrichten :— 
Epoch 1904 June 12-0 Berlin. 
M=312 52 22°66 
C=172 50 38°22 
8 =206 28 
28 59°66 + 1900'0 
ZZ GTA! 40°20 | 
= 33 48 59°19 
HK =520 ‘OSIOI 
log a=0°5559733 
An ephemeris for the period May 7—August 11, 1904, from 
which the following is an extract, is also given :— 
Ephemeris 12h. (M.T. Berlin). 
1904 ° a 6 log x log A Brightness 
m. Ss. a r 
May 7 I8 221 +2 50°9 0'5208 0°4223  o'o12 
II TSeet 1 Ee se2728 
15 17 59 2 +4 42 075243 0'4044 o'o14 
19 17 57 23 +4 397 
23 1755 7 +5 139 0°5186 03881 o'or5 
27 17 52 35 +5 46°6 
31 17 49 48 +6 17°4 0°5128 0°3739 O'017 
STARS HAVING PEcuLIAR SpEcTRA.—In Circular No. 76 
of the Harvard College Observatory, Prof. Pickering gives 
a list of stars which have been found, on the Henry Draper 
NO. 1800, VOL. 69] 
Memorial photographs, to possess peculiar spectra. The 
present list contains the designation, the coordinates, the 
magnitude and the nature of the spectrum peculiarity of 
twenty-two stars, and is supplementary to the similar lists. | 
previously published. 
Circulars No. 77 and No. 78 have also been received. 
The first is a supplement to the ‘‘ Provisional Catalogue 
of Variable Stars ’’ published in vol. xlviii. of the Harvard 
College Observatory Annals; the second deals with the 
variable stars in the nebula of Orion, and in many cases. 
confirms Dr. Max Wolf's conclusions respecting the vari- 
ability of a number of the stars published in Dr. Bond’s. 
discussion of the nebula, which appeared in vol. v. of the 
Harvard College Observatory Annals. 
SPECTRA OBTAINED FROM THE WEHNELT INTERRUPTER 
Discuarce.—Mr. H. W. Morse, of the Jefferson Physical 
Laboratory, Harvard University, has obtained the spectra 
of a number of elements, using as the light source the 
brilliant glow which surrounds the “ active ’’ electrode of 
a Wehnelt interrupter when the current is passing. He 
hoped to obtain, among other results, some indications, 
from the nature of the spectra, that the temperature of this. 
glow was intermediate between that of the flame and are, 
or arc and spark, and thereby to provide another definite step 
in the laboratory temperature scale. From the spectra 
obtained, however, it appears that the environment of the 
electrode passes through a very great range of temperature 
with each interruption of the current, for under the same 
constant experimental conditions the strongest lines of the 
condensed spark appeared at the same time as lines usually 
attributed to the flame. Usually the ‘‘ Wehnelt ’’ spectrum 
is closely allied to that of the spark, but often some of the 
strongest lines are missing. 
Mr. Morse discusses in detail the results obtained for each 
of the thirteen elements he used, and in a series of tables 
gives the wave-length of each line obtained, together with 
the relative intensity of the line in the arc, spark, and 
““ Wehnelt ’’ spectra respectively. A number of reproduc- 
tions of the spectra obtained also accompany the paper, 
which is published in No. 3, vol. xix., of the Astrophysical 
Journal. 
VARIABLE STARS OF THE ORION NepuLa.—Prof. Ernst 
Hartwig, in a communication to No. 3936 of the Astrono- 
mische Nachrichten, gives a list of corrections to the ‘‘ Chart 
of Stars in the Nebula of Orion ’’ which was published in 
vol. v. of the Harvard College Observatory Annals. The 
corrections have been obtained from observations made by 
Dr. Max Wolf and from the measurement of a photograph 
taken by Prof. Scheiner, and are given in tabular form for 
the equator of 1857. 
THE GERMAN ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION.2 
HE German South Polar Expedition was absent 
altogether twenty-eight months, of which fourteen 
months were passed in the south polar ice, ten. months with 
our operations in the South Atlantic and South Indian 
oceans, and four months with our work and residence in 
the islands of the Indian and Atlantic Oceans and at the 
Cape. 
After leaving Cape Town on December 7, 1901, a 
successful series of soundings and investigations was carried 
on between there and Kerguelen, and further on as far as 
the fringe of ice. Amongst the results, I lay stress on the 
demonstration of a trough more than 4500 metres deep, 
running between the Crozet Islands and Kerguelen, and 
connecting the abysses of the Indian Ocean with a deep. 
ravine on the outer edge of the Austral Glacial sea. 
The results of the expedition cannot be comprehensively 
surveyed until the whole material and the copious collec- 
tions, all of which have been brought back in good con- 
dition, are worked up and made accessible. It may, how- 
ever, be already affirmed that the Gauss Expedition achieved 
everything in the region assigned to it that it was possible 
to achieve in the time available. It discovered a new 
land, and thereby cleared up an old contested question re- 
garding the nature and extent of the Antarctic continent 
1 Abridged from a paper by Dr. Erich von Drygalski read before the 
Royal Geographical Society on April 25. 4 
