How do astronomers measure the surface temperature of the sun?
Of the four methods shown in the answers, the only practical one is a. You measure the intensity of light in the spectrum at very specific wavelengths. An object that emits light solely based on its temperature (a so-called black body) will have a spectrum — the distribution of energy over the different wavelengths — that is directly related to the temperature. By analyzing the shape of the sun’s spectrum, we can find its temperature. In theory, knowing the peak wavelength is sufficient, but in practice we measure the shape at many wavelengths. The Sun’s “effective temperature” (the temperature that explains its spectrum) is 5780 K (= 5507 C = 9945 F). —– It is also possible to measure it indirectly in the following way: we find how much energy we get from the Sun (this is called the solar flux) and this is 1370 watts per square metre, in space (before the clouds and atmosphere mess with the measurements). We can actually measure this flux with solar panels or light intensity dete
