Limb Darkening


240px-Mercury_transit_2
The limb darkened Sun, with the November 8, 2006, transit of the planet Mercury.

This page provides access to data files containing coefficients for various limb darkening approximations described in Van Hamme, 1993, AJ 106, 2096. Consult this paper for types of coefficients (monochromatic, bandpass-specific) and table format.

The coefficients are based on the stellar atmosphere models of Robert Kurucz, as posted on his website (reference date March 2012). The Kurucz models span 19 chemical compositions ([M/H] from -5.0 to +1.0), indicated in the file names using Kurucz’s convention.

The limb-darkening files contain bandpass-integrated coefficients for 95 bands and include band names. References for response curves are in Table 2 of the “Computing Binary Star Observables” booklet available here.

A simple interpolation program written in FORTRAN can be downloaded by clicking here. Please read the comment lines carefully before using this program.

File requested by Slavek Rucinski: limcof_rucinski_p00.dat

All limcof_bp_*.dat files in one tar file: limcoffiles2019.tar.gz