Previous
abstract 
Next
abstract
Session 32 - Curriculum in Crisis: Reinventing Stellar Astrophysics for Today's Graduate Student.
Oral session, Tuesday, June 11
Playcircle,
The spectra of novae and supernovae form in an environment that (a) is optically thick for lines and continua, (b) has a large radial extension, (c) has very high-speed (and differential) velocity fields, (d) huge temperature gradients, (e) very low densities, and (f) a huge number of spectral lines. Analyzing the thousands of observed spectra of novae and SNe available today in various archives requires very sophisticated numerical techniques. These methods must include a detailed treatment of non-LTE effects for a large number of lines, special relativistic radiative transfer, inclusion of millions of spectral lines, and an equation of state that is capable of handling several hundred species of both atoms and molecules.
I will describe how we solve these problems with our general model atmosphere code \tt PHOENIX and describe a few results of general interest, e.g., the influence of non-LTE effects on nova spectra.
