Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the first edition
- Preface to the second edition
- Preface to the third edition
- 1 Background
- 2 Fourier transforms
- 3 Spectroscopic tools
- 4 Light detectors
- 5 Radiation terms and definitions
- 6 The black body and its radiation
- 7 Radiative and convective energy transport
- 8 The continuous absorption coefficient
- 9 The model photosphere
- 10 The measurement of stellar continua
- 11 The line absorption coefficient
- 12 The measurement of spectral lines
- 13 The behavior of spectral lines
- 14 The measurement of stellar radii and temperatures
- 15 The measurement of photospheric pressure
- 16 Chemical analysis
- 17 Velocity fields in stellar photospheres
- 18 Stellar rotation
- Appendix A A table of useful constants
- Appendix B Physical parameters of stars
- Appendix C A fast Fourier transform Fortran program
- Appendix D Atomic data
- Appendix E The strongest lines in the solar spectrum
- Appendix F Computation of random errors
- Index
- References
Preface to the second edition
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2015
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the first edition
- Preface to the second edition
- Preface to the third edition
- 1 Background
- 2 Fourier transforms
- 3 Spectroscopic tools
- 4 Light detectors
- 5 Radiation terms and definitions
- 6 The black body and its radiation
- 7 Radiative and convective energy transport
- 8 The continuous absorption coefficient
- 9 The model photosphere
- 10 The measurement of stellar continua
- 11 The line absorption coefficient
- 12 The measurement of spectral lines
- 13 The behavior of spectral lines
- 14 The measurement of stellar radii and temperatures
- 15 The measurement of photospheric pressure
- 16 Chemical analysis
- 17 Velocity fields in stellar photospheres
- 18 Stellar rotation
- Appendix A A table of useful constants
- Appendix B Physical parameters of stars
- Appendix C A fast Fourier transform Fortran program
- Appendix D Atomic data
- Appendix E The strongest lines in the solar spectrum
- Appendix F Computation of random errors
- Index
- References
Summary
Wonderful growth has occurred in our understanding of stellar photospheres during the 15 years since the appearance of the first edition of “Photospheres.” I have managed to retain the same chapter names and the general plan of the first edition, and many of the equation numbers are also the same. But a significant portion of the material is new or revised. A revolution in light detectors has given us hundreds of times greater efficiency in measuring stellar spectra; Chapter 4 on detectors has been re-done. The astronomical literature is burgeoning with new results on the structure of photospheres, chemical abundances, radius measurements, stellar rotation, and photospheric velocity fields. Many of these results have been incorporated in this second edition, of course. At the same time, I stayed with my original purpose of making this volume an introduction to the subject. Unhappily, this means leaving out numerous exciting topics. My book Lectures (Gray 1988) takes up some of these, and it is recommended as a second installment, after the material in “Photospheres” has been mastered.
More than ever, the reader should keep in mind the fundamental nature of the stellar photosphere: of interest in its own right, with marvelous and intriguing physics, yet the link between the interior and chromospheres, coronae, and interstellar surroundings, and the source of most of our basic information about stars and stellar systems.
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- Information
- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005