Blackbody Curves
The intensity of blackbody emission across a range of wavelengths on the light spectrum can be expressed in the form of a curve created from the application of Planck's Law. Every possible temperature of a blackbody has its own separate curve. Through observing the properties of the curve one can find the apparent "color" of a certain temperature of blackbody through locating the wavelength of the peak of the curve. In addition, blackbody curves stacked on each other can illustrate the effects of temperature on the radiation.
![Picture](/uploads/3/0/3/4/30348951/450079891.gif?223)
- The peak of each curve shown in this graph is above the visible spectrum, so a blackbody at each of these temperatures will appear to be black.
- As temperature increases, the peak wavelength decreases at a decreasing rate.
- The intensity of curves with higher temperatures seems to be higher across the entire spectrum than in curves of lower temperatures.
- As temperature decreases, the curves appear to become "flatter".
![Picture](/uploads/3/0/3/4/30348951/780317344.jpeg?272)
- These curves are normalized; the intensity is only shown as a ratio of the peak. Here we can easily compare the shapes and peaks of the curves.
- These stars have peak wavelengths which correspond to non-infrared light. Spica is ultraviolet, while the Sun and Antares are in the visible spectrum, with the sun being yellow and Antares being red.
- Here we can easily see that lower temperature curves are "flatter" than higher temperature curves, without having to adjust for scale bias.
The above image is not a blackbody curve. It instead is a spectrum of the peak colors of blackbodies at certain colors. Here we can see how the range of temperatures where the peak is in the blue part of the spectrum is much higher than the range which have a red peak. This illustrates how the peak wavelength of the blackbody curves decreases at a decreasing rate as the temperature increases.