Use of "some useful atomic data"

To illustrate how the routines in the previous post can be used, I made a couple of plots.

Fig.1 The logarithmic solar abundances relative to hydrogen A (A(H) = 12) after Asplund et al (2009, 2009ARA&A..47..481A) versus the atomic number Z. The data are loaded using load_abundances.pro function.

Fig.2 The blow-up of Fig.1 up to Z = 40. The red line shows the values from Asplund et al (A09, 2009); the black line represents the abundances from Grevesse and Sauval (GS98, 1998, 1998SSRv...85..161G). The difference in the logarithmic scale representing 12 orders of magnitude does not look striking. However, some of the abundances differ almost for the factor of 2 between the two datasets. Note that the A09 abundances are systematically lower for the most abundant elements. Symbols of the elements are obtained from load_list_of_elements.pro.

Fig.3 The ratio between the (new, low-metalicity) abundances of Asplund et al (2009) and (old, high-metalicity) abundances of Grevesse and Sauval (1998). To get more insight into the cause of the abundance downgrade, read the paper of Asplund et al.

Fig.4 Elemental contributions to the mass fraction Z. The mass fraction is the sum of the abundances (over the metals, i.e. over the elements with Z > 2) multiplied with the corresponding atomic weights. Here I show individual contributions relative to the total Z. It is interesting to note that the metalicity with the A09 abundances is not just lower then the one with the GS98 ones, but less dominated by oxygen as well. The atomic weights used to compute the metalicity come from load_atomic_weights.pro.