Solar Phosphorus & Spots

Astronomers suspect that all the 92 known elements are present to some extent in the sun. Up to last week they had identified 58. Last week, phosphorus was quietly plucked out of the limbo of uncertainty to take its place as the 59th.

Forthcoming from Dr. Charlotte Emma Moore, 35-year-old Princeton Observatory researcher already known for her spectroscopic measurement of sunspot temperatures, the identification followed a triangular cooperation. Dr. Moore took some especially clear laboratory spectra of phosphorus provided by Dr. Carl Clarence Keiss of the Bureau of Standards, compared them minutely with some very faint lines lately observed on the infra-red solar spectrum by Mount Wilson's Harold Delos Babcock, found that three lines coincided.

A new eleven-year sunspot cycle was ushered in last autumn when Mount Wilson observers spotted two faint spots too far from the solar equator to be survivors of the old cycle, too small to have any effect on earth. Last week near the sun's eastern edge erupted a whirling blot 16,000 miles across. Astronomers predicted magnetic storms and poor radio reception during the twelve days before the sun's rotation wheeled it out of sight, thought it might grow big enough to be seen with the unaided eye through smoked glass.

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