Sir David Brewster found that in certain states of the atmosphere the obscure lines become much broader, and some of them deeply black; and he observed also, that, at the time the sun was setting in a veil of red light, part of the luminous spectrum was absorbed, whence he concluded that the earth’s atmosphere had absorbed the rays of light which occupied the dark bands. By direct experiments also the atmosphere was observed to act powerfully upon the rayless lines.
When a lens is used along with a prism, longitudinal dark lines of different breadths are seen to cross the bands, already described, at right angles; these M. Ragona-Scina and M. Babinet believe to be lines of interference which exist in light that has passed through a convex lens.
The lines are different both in kind and number in the spectra of gases and flames. In a highly-magnified spectrum from light passed through nitrous acid gas, Sir David Brewster counted 2000 dark bands. In the spectrum of a lamp, and generally of all white flames, none of the defective lines are found; so all such flames contain rays which do not exist in the light of the sun or stars. Brilliant red lines appear in the spectrum produced by the combustion of nitre upon charcoal; and in all artificial flames dark and bright bands exist, sometimes corresponding in position with those in the solar spectrum, and sometimes not.
A sunbeam received on a screen, after passing through a small round hole in a window-shutter, appears like a round white spot; but when a prism is interposed, the beam no longer occupies the same space. It is separated into the prismatic colours, and spread over a line of considerable length, while its breadth remains the same with that of the white spot. The act of spreading or separation is called the dispersion of the coloured rays. Dispersion always takes place in the plane of refraction, and is greater as the angle of incidence is greater. It varies inversely as the length of a wave of light, and directly as its velocity: hence towards the blue end of the spectrum, where the undulations of the rays are least, the dispersion is greatest. Substances have very different dispersive powers; that is to say, the spectra formed by two equal prisms of different substances, under precisely the same circumstances, are of different lengths. Thus, if a prism of flint-glass and one of crown-glass of equal refracting angles be presented to two rays of white light at equal angles, it will be found that the space over which the coloured rays are dispersed by the flint-glass is much greater than the space occupied by that produced by the crown-glass: and as the quantity of dispersion depends upon the refracting angle of the prism, the angles of the two prisms may be made such that, when the prisms are placed close together with their edges turned opposite ways, they will exactly oppose each other’s action, and will refract the coloured rays equally, but in contrary directions, so that an exact compensation will be effected, and the light will be refracted without colour (N. 195). The achromatic telescope is constructed on this principle. It consists of a tube with an object-glass or lens at one end to bring the rays to a focus, and form an image of the distant object, and a magnifying-glass at the other end to view the image thus formed. Now it is found that the object-glass, instead of making the rays converge to one point, disperses them, and gives a confused and coloured image: but by constructing it of two lenses in contact, one of flint and the other of crown-glass of certain forms and proportions, the dispersion is counteracted, and a perfectly well-defined and colourless image of the object is formed (N. 196). It was thought to be impossible to produce refraction without colour, till Mr. Hall, a gentleman of Worcestershire, constructed a telescope on this principle in the year 1733; and twenty-five years afterwards the achromatic telescope was brought to perfection by Mr. Dollond, a celebrated optician in London.