> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> I was under the impression that the colour temperature tells you roughly
>> how the signal power is distributed over the whole spectrum.
> 
> Roughly, in that it tells you where the peak is and the general shape of the
> rest of the spectrum.

Sure. So if you know how hot the star is, you know roughly the shape of 
the entire emission spectrum. :-)

>> Yeah, both stars and lightbulbs presumably put out far more IR and radio
>> waves than visible light...
> 
> Actually, many stars peak in the visible - Betelgeuse is red. Ours is yellow. I
> think maybe lightbulbs peak in the IR (lower temperature), so all we see is a
> section of the tail of the spectrum.

The peak is just the single wavelength at which there is the most 
energy. I think if you look at *bands* of the spectrum, it's possible 
for a wide band with low energy at any specific single wavelength to 
have a greater total power and a band containing only a single 
high-power (but narrow) peak.

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