National Aeronautics and Space Administration

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You Be the Astrophysicist

What Do Spectra Tell Us?

Most bright astronomical objects shine because they are hot. In these cases, the continuum
emission tells us the temperature of the object. The following table shows a rough guide for the
relationship between the temperature of an object and what part of the electromagnetic spectrum
where we see it shine.

Temperature Predominant Astronomical examples

(Kelvin) Radiation
600K Infrared Planets, warm dust
6,000K Optical The photosphere of Sun and other stars
60,000K UV The photosphere of very hot stars
600,000K Soft X-rays The corona of the Sun
6,000,000K X-rays The coronae of active stars

However, we can learn a lot more from the spectral lines than from the continuum. Two very
important things we can learn from spectral lines is the chemical composition of objects in space
and their motions.

Chemical composition

During the first half of the 19th century, scientists such as John Herschel, Fox Talbot, and William
Swan studied the spectra of different chemical elements in flames. Since then, the idea that each
element produces a set of characteristic emission lines has become well-established. Each
element has several prominent, and many lesser, emission lines in a characteristic pattern.

Emission spectrum of carbon

Sodium, for example, has two prominent yellow lines (the so-called D lines) at 589.0 and 589.6
nm – any sample that contains sodium (such as table salt) can be easily recognized using these
pair of lines.

The studies of the Sun's spectrum revealed absorption lines, rather than emission lines (dark lines
against the brighter continuum). The precise origin of these 'Fraunhofer lines' as we call them
today remained in doubt for many years, until Gustav Kirchhoff, in 1859, announced that the same
substance can either produce emission lines (when a hot gas is emitting its own light) or
absorption lines (when a light from a brighter, and usually hotter, source is shone through it). With
that discovery, scientists had the means to determine the chemical composition of stars through
spectroscopy.
Stars aren't the only objects for which we can identify chemical elements. Any spectrum from any
object allows us to look for the signatures of elements. This includes nebula, supernova remnants
and galaxies.

X-ray spectrum of supernova remnant Cas A from ASCA data. (Credit: Holt et
al., PASJ 1994)

Motions of stars and galaxies

Once we have identified specific elements in a spectrum, we can also look to see if the emission
lines from those elements has been shifted from where we might expect to find them. While we
usually talk about emission spectra as though the wavelengths of the lines are fixed, that is only
true when the source emitting the lines and the detector "seeing" the lines are not moving relative
to one another. When they are moving relative to each other, the lines will appear shifted. For
example, if a star is moving toward us, its lines will be observed at shorter wavelengths, which is
called "blueshifted". If the star is moving away from us, the lines will appear at longer
wavelengths, which is called "redshifted". This is called "Doppler shift."

Simplified star spectrum showing how it would appear if the star was at
rest with respect to us (top), moving toward us (middle; "blueshifted"), and
moving away from us (bottom; "redshifted").

If the spectrum of a star is red or blue shifted, then you can use that to infer its velocity along the
line of sight. Such "radial velocity" studies have had at least three important applications in
astrophysics.

1. One application is in the study of binary star systems. For stars in some binary systems we
can measure the radial velocities for one orbit (or more). Once we've done that, we can
relate that back to the gravitational pull using Newton's equations of motion (or their
astrophysical applications, Kepler's laws). If we have additional information, such as from
observations of eclipses, then we can sometimes measure the masses of the stars
accurately. Eclipsing binaries in which we can see the spectral lines of both stars have
played a crucial role in establishing the masses and the radii of different types of stars.
 The red giant star Mira A (right) and its companion, a close binary pair. (Credit:
M. Karovska/Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and NASA)

2. Another application is the study of the structure of our galaxy. Stars in the Galaxy revolve
around its center, just like planets revolve around the Sun. It's more complicated, because
the gravity is due to all the stars in the Galaxy that lie inside the stars' orbit combined;
whereas in the Solar system, the Sun has so much more mass than the planets combined,
we can ignore the pull of the planets, more or less. Radial velocity studies of stars (binary or
single) have played a major role in establishing the shape of the Galaxy. It is still an active
field today: for example, one form of the evidence for dark matter comes from the study of
the distribution of velocities at different distances from the center of the Galaxy (and for
other galaxies). Another exciting development is from the radial velocity studies of stars very
near the Galactic center, which strongly suggest that our Galaxy contains a massive black
hole.

An artist's conception of the Milky Way galaxy. (Credit: NASA/JPL)

3. A third application is the expansion of the Universe. Edwin Hubble established that more
distant galaxies tended to have more red-shifted spectra. Although not predicted even by
 Einstein, such an expanding universe is a natural solution for his general theory of relativity.
Today, for more distant galaxies, the redshift is used as primary indicator of their distances.
The ratio of the recession velocity to the distance is called the Hubble constant, and the
precise measurement of its value is one of the major goals of astrophysics today, using such
tools as the Hubble Space Telescope.

Learn more about Doppler shift

Return to solving for M31's velocity using its spectrum

A service of the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC), Dr. Alan Smale (Director), within the Astrophysics Science Division (ASD) at NASA/GSFC

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• Page Last Updated: 05-May-2016