Why does sunlight have a continuous spectrum?
This follows up question a question asked in #53 about the makeup of sunlight. Why is the solar emission spectra nearly continuous, when the sun itself is mostly made up of hydrogen and helium which themselves have very discrete spectra? Is it due to the cycle of emission absorption as the photon leaves the sun, as you wrote, or is there more to it than that? Reply This is a bit outside my field of magnetospheric physics, but I believe the reply to #53 pretty much sums up the answer. Some other sites on this problem are http://www.physicsforums.com/archive/index.php/t-54404.html http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/phy00/phy00413.htm http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/phy05/phy05000.htm The overall conclusion is that a dense hot gas in which photons are continually absorbed and re-emitted, by atoms and ions in fast motion, or scattered by electrons, will give out a spectrum like a black body.
This follows up question a question asked in #53 about the makeup of sunlight. Why is the solar emission spectra nearly continuous, when the sun itself is mostly made up of hydrogen and helium which themselves have very discrete spectra? Is it due to the cycle of emission absorption as the photon leaves the sun, as you wrote, or is there more to it than that? Reply This is a bit outside my field of magnetospheric physics, but I believe the reply to #53 pretty much sums up the answer. Some other sites on this problem are http://www.physicsforums.com/archive/index.php/t-54404.html http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/phy00/phy00413.htm http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/phy05/phy05000.htm The overall conclusion is that a dense hot gas in which photons are continually absorbed and re-emitted, by atoms and ions in fast motion, or scattered by electrons, will give out a spectrum like a black body. (If you are math oriented, it might remind you of the central limit theorem: the sum of ma
