I am trying to understand color temperature, and have gotten tired of looking fo r references and not finding anything that explains it to my satisfaction. I gu ess most descriptions are kept necessarily simple, but as a Ph.D. in electromagn etics, I am looking for a more detailed answer.
I understand measuring temperature in Kelvin. A blackbody radiator heated to te mperature x Kelvin radiates light at such and such a color. I assume that the s pectrum is pretty much a dirac function at a certain frequency.
However, most light we encounter is a continuous spectrum - not a single source at one discrete frequency. So my question is, how does a continuous spectrum of light get mapped into a single color temperature number?
Is it done by taking the frequency for which the spectrum has the highest intens ity peak?
Do you integrate the spectrum intensity over the region of visible frequencies a nd find some sort of weighted average?
Do you find an equivalent RGB mix and somehow map the coefficients (trimistus va lues?) into a single temperature number?
Someone please enlighten me.
Bookmarks