How does spectrography help scientists to define the constituents of the sun and planets?

Answer 1

Analyzing light can tell you almost anything about the universe. You can calculate just how excited every photon is, what color or what "brand" of light is emitted from any given star in the entire visible universe. Photons behave certain ways when they interact with certain substances, so how light bounces or reflects or refracts or in other ways interacts with planets and their atmospheres can give us an idea as to what makes it up. By combining what we can determine from gravitational influence and the amount of energy and type of light emitted from a star, we can find out how massive a star is and what makes it up. Light is really the only data we have about the universe--luckily, light is qualitative and quantitative and we can learn a heck of a lot from it. Every single reaction that takes place on an astronomical scale has a tag associated with it--something it gives off 999,999 times out of a million, where if astronomers see it, they know what's going on. By seeing light--which is more than visible light, but radio waves, UV rays, and gamma rays--they can postulate anything that's going on, even billion of light years away.

Answer 2

Waaaaaht? i think you answerd your own question: spectrography helps scientists to define the constituents of the sun and planets, it just does. nah really okay~

Atomic absorption spectroscopy in analytical chemistry is a technique for determining the concentration of a particular metal element within a sample. Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy can be used to analyse the concentration of over 62 different metals in a solution.

Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy was first developed during the 1950's by a team of Australian chemists, lead by Alan Walsh, working at the CSIRO (Commonwealth Science and Industry Research Organisation) Division of Chemical Physics, in Melbourne Australia. Typically, the technique makes use of a flame to atomize the sample, but other atomizers such as a graphite furnace are also used. Three steps are involved in turning a liquid sample into an atomic gas:

Desolvation – the liquid solvent is evaporated, and the dry sample remains
Vaporisation – the solid sample vaporises to a gas
Volatilisation – the compounds making up the sample are broken into free atoms.
The flame is arranged such that it is laterally long (usually 10cm) and not deep. The height of the flame must also be controlled by controlling the flow of the fuel mixture. A beam of light is focused through this flame at its longest axis (the lateral axis) onto a detector past the flame.

The light that is focused into the flame is produced by a hollow cathode lamp. Inside the lamp is a cylindrical metal cathode containing the metal for excitation, and an anode. When a high voltage is applied across the anode and cathode, the metal atoms in the cathode are excited into producing light with a certain emission spectra. The type of hollow cathode tube depends on the metal being analysed. For analysing the concentration of copper in an ore, a copper cathode tube would be used, and likewise for any other metal being analysed. The electrons of the atoms in the flame can be promoted to higher orbitals for an instant by absorbing a set quantity of energy (a quantum). This amount of energy is specific to a particular electron transition in a particular element. As the quantity of energy put into the flame is known, and the quantity remaining at the other side (at the detector) can be measured, it is possible to calculate how many of these transitions took place, and thus get a signal that is proportional to the concentration of the element being measured.

Answer 3

mostly it could not happen The plane of the earths orbit is called the ecliptic plane because from earth this is the plane in the sky that the sun follows and if the sun is there , that's where eclipses will be and hence the name Planets with an orbit that was not lined up with the other orbits would be unstable. in the billions of years of the solar system, any planet with a misaligned would have come under the influence of another planet and eventually collided. an exception is pluto Pluto goes around the sun three times in the time it takes Neptune to orbit the sun twice. Because of this resonance, the planets never even come close to each other. Jupiter is very useful to the earth in that it collects many wayward asteroids and prevents them doing damage on earth. An early collision between earth and a small planet gave earth a much bigger iron core which gave it a strong magnetic field which protects us from cosmic rays and hence allows the development of complex life.

Answer 4

Absorption.

Have you ever looked through a prism at different types of lights(helium, argon, neon)?

You'll see they have mainly a continuous spectrum but they'll be some black lines in the spectrum. These are lines of absoprtion. Here's the amazing part though: The absorptions are the same here on earth as on a star. By looking at the absorption pattern, you can figure out what is what.

Answer 5

when solar radiation is condensed on the slit of a spectrometer,the observed spectrum is found to consist of a 'line absorption spectrum'.they are due to the absorption by the elements in the sun's atmosphere.when the intense bright lines pass through the comparitively cooler vapours,the charecteristic wavelengths are absorbed.this gives rise to dark line against a bright background.the analysis of these 'fraunhoffer lines' helps in predicting the composition of the sun's atmosphere.


P.S:helium was discovered by a study of Fraunhoffer lines.

Answer 6

Every chemical substance emits light in a particular frequency. By studying the light spectrum (visible or otherwise) of stars, planets and various other space phenomena, we can learn what they are made of.

Answer 7

Each element has its own unique spectrum, therefore spectrography identifies the elements present in a given object in the universe.

Answer 8

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

They measure the wavelengths of the light emitting from the sun, which helps them conclude what materials the sun and other planets are made of.