astronomical spectroscopy
Sign in to savescience of temporal, spatial, and spectral distributions of radiation
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Encyclopedic overview
The Star-Spectroscope of the Lick Observatory in 1898. Designed by James Keeler and constructed by John Brashear.
Astronomical spectroscopy is the study of astronomy using the techniques of spectroscopy to measure the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation, including visible light, ultraviolet, X-ray, infrared and radio waves that radiate from stars and other celestial objects. A stellar spectrum can reveal many properties of stars, such as their chemical composition, temperature, density, mass, distance and luminosity. Spectroscopy can show the velocity of motion towards or away from the observer by measuring the Doppler shift. Spectroscopy is also used to study the physical properties of many other types of celestial objects such as planets, nebulae, galaxies, and active galactic nuclei.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “astronomical spectroscopy” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.