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Emission Measures Demystified

2024/03/21 by B. R. Dennis, K. J. H. Phillips, Dennis, Brian R. +1
Engineering · #FOS: Physical sciences #Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR) #Vehicle emissions and performance

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2403.14845

openalex publication_date 2024/03/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

We review the terms, spectral radiance and spectral irradiance, and show how their precise definitions are crucial for interpreting observations made with different instruments covering widely different energy or wavelength ranges. We show how the use of column and volume emission measures in different solar physics and astrophysics communities has led to confusion in relating measured extreme ultraviolet and soft X-ray spectra with theoretical spectra generated, in particular, using CHIANTI. We describe a method for obtaining spatially integrated X-ray line and continuum spectra using CHIANTI that requires a column emission measure when only the plasma temperature and volume emission measure, but not the source area, are known from observations.

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