I've recently been teaching kids about what we can learn about stars and nebulae from observing their light. Temperature, age, size, composition, etc. But the simplified explanations that I seem to find everywhere leaves me with one major question:

How does this work when there is no such thing as a continous spectrum?


Emission spectrums I can understand fine. Atom gets excited*, ejaculatesemits photons with specific energy, spectrometer tells us what we're dealing with. The problem is that all the texts I come across seem to say that absorption spectra are the important ones, and colour me stupid, but don't they require a non-existent continous spectrum as a "background"?

Can anyone explain this to me, or point me to a webpage that does? Or will I just have to live with the lies-to-children version?

*is it possible to get a super-orgasm by showing every atom in your body some good atom porn?

Posted by: retroflex at 10:23 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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