Solar spectrum

The distribution of sunlight intensity across wavelengths, formed by a near-continuous background with dark absorption lines from cooler gas in the Sun’s atmosphere.

Photosphere: The visible layer of the Sun from which most sunlight escapes. Its hot, dense gas produces the near-continuous background of the solar spectrum.
Electromagnetic spectrum: The complete range of electromagnetic radiation, ordered by frequency or wavelength. The solar spectrum is the Sun’s contribution across a portion of this full range.
Solar abundance: The proportions of chemical elements in the Sun, inferred chiefly from its spectrum. Absorption-line strengths provide evidence for the Sun’s elemental composition.
Isaac Newton: An English physicist and mathematician who demonstrated that a prism separates white light into colors. His prism experiments established that sunlight contains a range of colors.
Emission spectrum: A spectrum containing bright lines or bands emitted by excited atoms, molecules, or solids. It contrasts with the Sun’s dark absorption lines against a bright continuum.
Fraunhofer lines: Dark absorption lines in the solar spectrum, named for the physicist who catalogued them. They are the spectrum’s distinctive dark features, created when atoms absorb particular wavelengths.
Wavelength: The distance between successive corresponding points of a wave. Solar spectral features are indexed by wavelength.
Zeeman effect: The splitting or shifting of spectral lines in a magnetic field. Changes in solar line shapes reveal magnetic fields on the Sun.
William Hyde Wollaston: An English chemist and physicist who observed dark lines in the solar spectrum in 1802. His early report preceded Fraunhofer’s detailed mapping of the lines.
Fraunhofer spectrum: The pattern of dark lines observed in sunlight, historically described separately from laboratory spectra. The term emphasizes the solar line pattern rather than the full wavelength distribution.

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