Physical techniques electromagnetic spectrum

The electromagnetic spectrum. The wavelengths of light associated with important spectroscopy techniques are shown in the figure. From D. M. Freifelder, Physical Biochemistry, W. H. Freeman (San Francisco). Copyright 1982. All rights reserved. 

The advances made in the last decade of the XXth century in the study of the chemical evolution of the Universe have been really spectacular. On one hand, they have been brought by the availability of large-aperture ground-based telescopes and space borne telescopes (working in both the visible and other regions of the electromagnetic spectrum), and on the other hand by advances in theory and numerical modelling techniques in many fields of astrophysics such as stellar evolution stellar atmospheres, the physics of ionised plasmas and atomic and molecular physics. 

Since the discovery of x-rays by Roentgen in 1896, this region of the electromagnetic spectrum has been a source of significant contributions to our fundamental knowledge of atomic structure and to our techniques for chemical analysis. By 1927, six Nobel prizes in physics had been awarded for studies on the physics of x-rays and the interaction of x-rays with matter. 

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