1 article for "Huggins"
Huggins, Sir William [Astro*Index](1824-1910) English astronomer. Born and died at London.
He applied the Doppler-Fizeau shift to the spectra of stars. If a star was moving away from the Earth, its spectral lines would be shifted toward the red end of the spectrum; if moving toward the Earth, the lines would move toward the blue end. In 1868, he found a red shift in one of the hydrogen lines of the spectrum of Sirius. This discovery was of fundamental importance to astronomy; it provided a method by which the radial velocity of a star could be determined. Previously, only the proper motion across the line-of-sight could be measured. Studies of the radial velocities of stars have led us to an understanding of the structure of the universe.
See also:
♦ Light Spectrum ♦ Doppler Effect
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