PRECISION MEASUREMENT OF RELATIVE OSCILLATOR STRENGTHS .1. FUNDAMENTAL TECHNIQUE - FIRST APPLICATION TO MN 1

A discussion of the importance of accurate measurements of atomic oscillator strengths in astrophysics is followed by an analysis of the accuracy that is potentially available together with a critical survey of the most useful tech¬niques. A full discussion is given of the furnace method used in Oxford, and first results obtained for a few lines of Mn I are presented. It is shown that the accuracy of even this straightforward method can in some circumstances suffer from uncertainties about the state of thermodynamic equilibrium. © Royal Astronomical Society • Provided by the NASA Astrophysics Data System.