This simple ratio would only hold good, however, provided no more light were lost by the repeated reflections and refractions in the telescope than in the eye. That light must be so lost was evident, but no data existed for determining the loss. HERSCHEL was thus led to a long series of photometric experiments on the reflecting powers of the metals used in his mirrors, and on the amount of light transmitted by lenses. Applying the corrections thus deduced experimentally, he found that the space-penetrating power of his twenty-foot telescope, with which he made his star-gauges, was sixty-one times that of the unassisted eye, while the space-penetrating power of his great forty-foot telescope was one hundred and ninety-two times that of the eye. In support of his important conclusions HERSCHEL had an almost unlimited amount of experimental data in the records of his observations, of which he made effective use.
By far the most important of HERSCHEL'S work in the domain of pure physics was published in the same year (1800), and related to radiant heat. The investigation of the space-penetrating powers of telescopes was undertaken for the sole purpose of aiding him in measuring the dimensions of the stellar universe, and there was no temptation for him to pursue it beyond the limits of its immediate usefulness. But here, though the first hint leading to remarkable discoveries was a direct consequence of his astronomical work, the novelty and interest of the phenomena observed induced him to follow the investigation very far beyond the mere solution of the practical question in which it originated.
Having tried many varieties of shade-glasses between the eye-piece of his telescope and the eye, in order to reduce the inordinate degree of heat and light transmitted by the instrument when directed towards the sun, he observed that certain combinations of colored glasses permitted very little light to pass, but transmitted so much heat that they could not be used; while, on the other hand, different combinations and differently colored glasses would stop nearly all the heat, but allow an inconveniently great amount of light to pass. At the same time he noticed, in the various experiments, that the images of the sun were of different colors. This suggested the question as to whether there was not a different heating power proper to each color of the spectrum. On comparing the readings of sensitive thermometers exposed in different portions of an intense solar spectrum, he found that, beginning with the violet end, he came to the maximum of light long before that of heat, which lay at the other extremity, that is, near the red. By several experiments it appeared that the maximum of illumination, _i. e._, the yellow, had little more than half the heat of the full red rays; and from other experiments he concluded that even the full red fell short of the maximum of heat, which, perhaps, lay even a little beyond the limits of the visible spectrum.