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Temperature Determination and Emission Measure Modeling of the Coronae of &alpha Centauri and Procyon
Raassen, AJJ; Kaastra, JS; van der meer, RLJ; Mewe, R; Audard, M; Gudel, M; Ness, J-U; and Behar, E

Abstract


We have obtained the spectra of the coronae of &alpha Centauri and Procyon using the Reflection Grating Spectrometer (RGS) on board XMM-Newton and the Lowe Energy Transmission Grating Spectrometer (LETGS) on board Chandra. From measured line fluxes of H- and He-like lines of Carbon, Nitrogen and Oxygen and of strong lines of Fe IX and Fe X temperature estimates and emission measures EM have been obtained. For all three stars (Procyon, &alpha Cen (G2V), and &alpha Cen (K1V)) the temperatures are the the regime of 1-2 MK. The emission measure for Procyon is about 1 x 1050 cm-3 and for both components of &alpha Cen about 8 x 1048 cm-3. Global fits to the total spectrum using SPEX show significant temperature components around 1 and 2 MK. Self-consistent continuous emission measures have been constructed. The &alpha Cen (K1V) is somewhat hotter than its (G2V) companion.


Summary

I used this article mainly to gain insight into the details of emission measure calcualtion. This paper directly gives the definition of emission measure as

EM = nenHV

where ne is the electron density, nH is the hydrogen density, and V is the emitting volume. The authors give
nH = 0.85ne


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