Monday, February 21, 2005

Terrestrial oxygen

Terrestrial oxygen as seen in the sun's spectrum, originally taken March 17, 2003.



It's terrestrial only in the sense of being non-astronomical; to all but astronomers it would be called "atmospheric".

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oooh, pretty. I am constantly in awe of spectra. I don't know what I consider Fraunhofer's biggest contribution to science -- the discovery of spectral lines, the equitorial telescope mount (plus siderial clock drive!), the heliometer, or his significant improvements to achromatic optics.

colin said...

Spectral lines, achromatic optics, heliometer, equitorial mount.

If by "science," you mean a set of fields, of which astronomy is a proper subset.

Anonymous said...

Are you saying spectral lines aren't physics? Chemistry? Sure, he didn't contribute greatly to biology but one man can only do so much, no? I would point out that optics isn't really limited to astronomy either.

Anonymous said...

I am informed by Colin that I misread is post. So nevermind.

colin said...

I realize that Steven't misinterpretation was not unreasonable. What I meant was that that is the order in which I would rate the scientific value of each contribution. The order indicates my estimation of the breadth of each contribution's influence.