fireplace Light Motion Photo Friday Simply fire, hot, light, and impalpable, in a fireplace.
[update: this photo had participated at Photo Friday in 04-01-05 ‘Hot’ challenge as link n.508]
It was taken with 1/1000 seconds of exposure and ISO-400 to fix the plasma motion and capture the maximum of color.
This picture wasn’t graphically manipulated.
Fire Light Motion Planck Law Wien displacement law 
This picture was taken in a dark room, obviously without flash, with an exposure time of 1/160 seconds, and moving the flame with a lateral breeze, e.g. coming from an hairdryer. I’m proud to say that this picture hasn’t been graphically manipulated and you can see really the original photo.
Now some physical considerations. A candle flame can be modelized with a plasma of ionized gaseous molecules that, in first approximation, is in thermal self-equilibrium. Then candle radiation is emitted as a black body radiation at a fixed temperature, following the Planck Law.
Moreover Wien’s displacement law gives the wavelength at which the Planck law has the maximum specific intensity. Such law gives
Where lambda is the wavelength in meter and b is a constant equals to 0.002897 Kelvin x meter.
On average, the maximum flame temperature is about 1800 K, so the candle flame is said to have a color temperature of 1800 degrees K. Wien’s law gives for this temperature a wavelength for the maximum of intensity of 1600 nanometer (1.6×10-6 m) that justify the yellow-red color of the flame with a peak emission in the infrared zone. That explains the heat coming from the candle in comparison to the low luminosity.
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I'm 25 years old and I live in Rome, Italy. I'm attending Astrophysics at University and my last purchase, a digital camera, has improved my life.
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