Helium was first detected as an unknown, yellow spectral line signature in sunlight during a solar eclipse in 1868 by Georges Rayet, [15] Captain C. T. Haig, [16] Norman R. Pogson, [17] and Lieutenant John Herschel, [18] and was subsequently confirmed by French astronomer Jules Janssen.[19] Janssen is often jointly credited with detecting the element, along with Norman Lockyer. Janssen recorded the helium spectral line during the solar eclipse of 1868, while Lockyer observed it from Britain. However, only Lockyer proposed that the line was due to a new element, which he named after the Sun. The formal discovery of the element was made in 1895 by chemists Sir William Ramsay, Per Teodor Cleve, and Nils Abraham Langlet, who found helium emanating from the uranium ore cleveite, which is now not regarded as a separate mineral species, but as a variety of uraninite.[20][21] In 1903, large reserves of helium were found in natural gas fields in parts of the United States, by far the largest supplier of the gas today.
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natural gas fields
separate mineral species
uranium ore cleveite
nils abraham langlet
