Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 April 2016
There has been a marked change in the past few years in the incidence of interest in stellar spectra. The great initial task of classification has attained its first objective—though the Henry Draper Extension, and other investigations are still progressing. Perhaps a million stars are still accessible to classification with existing instruments; but more and more time is being spent upon individual spectra, and upon theoretical investigations. In these fields progress has been very rapid, and only some of the more important results may be mentioned here.