We’re talking about thermal,
collisional/coronal, equilibrium,
optically thin plasmas here…probably
Diagnostics and Physical Properties
Temperatures and overall emission
levels: DEMs
Densities: line ratios…but also source
location via f/i
Abundances: line ratios and
line-to-continuum ratios
Kinematics:
line broadening and profile shapes
Chandra (and XMM) have increased the spectral
resolution available to X-ray astronomers by almost a factor
of 100.