A later result of this method of investigation was the discovery of a new member of the rare earths, monium or victorium, the spectrum of which is characterized by an isolated group of lines, only to be detected photographically, high up in the ultra-violet; the existence of this body was announced in his presidential address to the British Association at Bristol in 1898.
Vega's Thesaurus has been reproduced photographically by the Italian government.
The following table gives the wave-lengths of the photographically brightest of these, retaining four significant figures in place of Westman's five.
The ultra-violet and the visual portion are recorded photographically; Rowland's classical work shows some 5700 lines in the former, and 14,200 in the latter, on a graduated scale of intensities from moo to o, or 0000, for the faintest lines; between a quarter and a third of these lines have been identified, fully 2000 belonging to iron, and several hundred to water vapour and other atmospheric absorption.
This favourable case is not realized at every opposition, but in 1900 the distance was as little as one-third of that of the sun, and it was observed from October 1900 to January 1901 photographically upon a concerted but not absolutely uniform plan by many observatories, of which the chief were the French national observatories, Greenwich,.
