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A solar eclipse

Coronium was the name of a suggested chemical element, hypothesised in the 19th century. It was named after the solar corona.

During the total solar eclipse of 7 August 1869, a green emission line of wavelength 530.3 nm was observed in the coronal spectrum. Since this line did not correspond to that of any known material, it was proposed that it was due to an unknown element, provisionally named coronium.

In 1902, in an attempt at a chemical conception of the aether, Dimitri Mendeleev hypothesized that there existed two inert chemical elements of lesser atomic weight than hydrogen. Of these two, he thought the lighter to be an all-penetrating, all-pervasive gas, and the slightly heavier one to be coronium. Later he renamed coronium as newtonium.^[1]

It was not until the 1930s that Walter Grotrian and Bengt Edlén discovered that the spectral line at 530.3 nm was due to highly-ionized iron (Fe¹³⁺); other unusual lines in the coronal spectrum were also caused by highly-charged ions, such as nickel, the high ionization being due to the extreme temperature of the solar corona.

[edit] References

1. ^ Ede, Andrew (2006). The Chemical Element: A Historical Perspective, Greenwood Press. pp.83-84. ISBN 0313333041. 

[edit] Further reading

• Claridge, George C. (1937). "Coronium". Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada 31: 337-346, http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=1937JRASC..31..337C&db_key=AST&data_type=HTML&format=&high=45dc5ac9f629234. 

[edit] External links

• Haisch, Bernard; Odenwald, Stan. "Solar Spectroscopy: Coronium". Encyclopedia of the Cosmos. Retrieved on 2008-08-25.

• Laser Stars. "History of Coronium". Retrieved on 2008-08-25.