How do they know how hot a star is?

[John Connor]

So i was reading this thread and this thread and was wondering how they figure out how hot something can be in space? I have a felling it has something to do with frequency emissions.

 

[Paul98]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_radiation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared

 

[Denbo1991]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-body_radiation

 

[A5]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-body_radiation

Yup. Stars are pretty much ideal black-bodies.

 

[jagec]

Astronomy is an amazing demonstration of the power of basic science. How hot it is, how big it is, what it's made out of, how fast it's moving, how far away it is...all of this can be detected from light-years away.

 

[silverpig]

Yup. Stars are pretty much ideal black-bodies.

Consider a spherical star in a vacuum...

🙂

 

[SecurityTheatre]

We can produce a pretty accurate models of stars in simulation now.

But that basically confirms the black-body radiation theory, for the most part, I believe.

 

[watdahel]

It's a guess until proven wrong really.