Saturday, May 3, 2014

The Sun's Absorption Spectrum


The artist cannot ask for a better color palette than this: the colors in sunlight exposed when spread into a spectrum. Even better are the pesky little black marks here and there. Those are colors that have been absorbed and removed from the light we see. What causes this absorption is even more interesting. High above the sun is a layer of gas containing all the elements in the sun. As the pure solar light passes through this gas layer the atoms in the layer absorb specific colors for each kind of atom. This is how we discovered what the sun was made of.

(photo: N.A.Sharp, NOAO/NSO/Kitt Peak FTS/AURA/NSF)