Questions tagged [radiative-transfer]

I'm having a hard time understanding the Gunn-Peterson effect and the Ly-alpha line and I've written a couple of questions below. The trough we see in the spectra of quasars is the Gunn-Peterson trough, right? Does this trough have to start from…

I’m studying specific intensity for a course on astronomical instrumentation. I can’t quite get my head around the proper definition of the term. One definition I’ve found in various lecture notes / books / powerpoint slides online is that specific…

please correct me if I am mistaken, I was in the middle of a thought process. We take a unit area dA of sun,, which is emitting light directly to our line of sight. But there are also numerous other unit areas throughout sun's surface whose light…

I do not understand completely the meaning of critical density when talking about atomic or molecular line emission in astrophysical gas clouds: I know that it is way more complex than this, but just taking the two levels approximation (i.e. an…