Post #2790881
2023-05-10 15:20 UTC
In her thesis, Payne applied developments in quantum mechanics to understand the observatory's immense catalog of stellar spectra. She estimated elemental abundances in stars and showed that spectra were influenced by the amount of ionization at different temperatures.
Payne's thesis "Stellar Atmospheres" was published in 1925. The astronomers Otto Struve and Velta Zeberg supposedly said it was "undoubtedly the most brilliant Ph.D. thesis ever written in astronomy."
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1925PhDT.........1P/abstract
Replies (1)
-
@mcnees@mastodon.social 2023-05-10 15:22
Before Payne's work, the accepted theory significantly underestimated the abundance of Hydrogen and Helium in stars. Existing models assumed the composition of the sun was similar to that of Earth. Estimates of the amount of H were made using Balmer absorption. But this involves H atoms in the first excited state. Payne realized that for the 5800K surface temp of the sun, only 1 per 10⁸ H atoms are in this state. She concluded that stars are mostly H and He!