- #1
- 22,195
- 6,878
Ekaterina Magg, Maria Bergemann and colleagues have published results of new calculations concerning the composition of the sun.
https://phys.org/news/2022-05-solar-spectrum-decade-long-controversy-sun.html
As part of the work on her Ph.D. in that group, Ekaterina Magg set out to calculate in more detail the interaction of radiation matter in the solar photosphere.
The study, "Observational constraints on the origin of the elements. IV: The standard composition of the sun," is published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2022/05/aa42971-21/aa42971-21.html
https://phys.org/news/2022-05-solar-spectrum-decade-long-controversy-sun.html
Stellar spectra contain conspicuous, sharp dark lines, first noticed by William Wollaston in 1802, famously rediscovered by Joseph von Fraunhofer in 1814, and identified as tell-tale signs indicating the presence of specific chemical elements by Gustav Kirchhoff and Robert Bunsen in the 1860s.
Pioneering work by the Indian astrophysicist Meghnad Saha in 1920 related the strength of those "absorption lines" to stellar temperature and chemical composition, providing the basis for our physical models of stars. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin's realization that stars like our sun consist mainly of hydrogen and helium, with no more than trace amounts of heavier chemical elements, is based on that work.
Maria Bergemann (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy) says: "The new solar models based on our new chemical composition are more realistic than ever before: they produce a model of the sun that is consistent with all the information we have about the sun's present-day structure—sound waves, neutrinos, luminosity, and the sun's radius—without the need for non-standard, exotic physics in the solar interior."
As part of the work on her Ph.D. in that group, Ekaterina Magg set out to calculate in more detail the interaction of radiation matter in the solar photosphere.
The study, "Observational constraints on the origin of the elements. IV: The standard composition of the sun," is published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2022/05/aa42971-21/aa42971-21.html