Quote:
Originally Posted by upriver
Yes, I introduced this idea from a different paper as part of my argument against the optical thickness explanation for the solar blackbody spectrum.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Tim Thompson
Not unless you are a lot older than I thought. See Chandrasekhar & Breen, 1946 (and the other installements in the 5 part series linked from there). |
It appears that the history of this matter dates back to an ApJ paper based on a talk delivered by
Rupert Wildt, at
Yerkes Observatory, in June 1938 (
Wildt, 1939a), and his subsequent, more detailed analysis (
Wildt, 1939b). There are several more papers authored or co-authored by Wildt on the topic of the negative hydrogen ion in the following years. The Chandrasekhar & Breen paper appears to be the one that gets credit for being the first
really detailed analysis of the problem. Mihalas, in his
book on stellar atmospheres, specifically cites
Chandrasekhar & Breen, but only mentions
Pannekoek & Wildt without specific references. Wildt makes use of data from Pannekoek, but I can't find any earlier papers than Wildt's, and I can't find any by Pannekoek.
So we can trace our understanding, that the continuum SED of the sun is due mainly to photospheric negative hydrogen ions back to 69 years ago.
P.S. After typing all that, I see that Wheeler & Wildt, 1942, credit Pannekoek (MNRAS, vol 96, p. 162, 1931) as the original proponent, which pushes the idea back to 77 years ago. The Pannekoek paper is not online, at least it is not in the NASA ADS server.