Coined 1868 from Greek 'hḗlios' (sun) — first detected in the sun's spectrum during a solar eclipse, before being found on Earth.
A chemical element (symbol He, atomic number 2), a colorless, odorless, inert noble gas, the second lightest and second most abundant element in the universe.
Coined in 1868 from Greek 'hḗlios' (sun) with the chemical element suffix '-ium.' The element was first detected not on Earth but in the sun — during a solar eclipse on August 18, 1868, the French astronomer Jules Janssen and the English astronomer Norman Lockyer independently observed an unknown yellow spectral line in the sun's chromosphere that matched no known element. Lockyer and the chemist Edward Frankland named it after the sun itself. Helium was not
Helium is the only element first discovered off-planet. French astronomer Jules Janssen and English astronomer Norman Lockyer independently observed its spectral signature in the sun's chromosphere during the 1868 solar eclipse — 27 years before it was isolated on Earth by William Ramsay in 1895.