Editing Openai/6897769e-4ee4-800f-aba5-69cca34f701c (section)

=== If you want to take this seriously as a candidate explanation for the ~0.47° difference, I suggest a staged improvement plan: ===
# Recompute θ(λ) using high-precision refractive index tables for water (Hale & Querry or refractiveindex.info). (You asked for this earlier — I can do it if you want. I’ll need the tabulated data or I can use a known fit if you allow web lookups.)
# Replace narrow toy Gaussians by real emission line intensities: - Stellar: use a solar spectrum (observed) for the continuum + line strengths (Hα, Na, etc.) - Plasma: use known nebular line ratios / emissivities for a chosen plasma temperature and density.
# Weight the angle not by just spectral radiance, but by scattered intensity at each λ — i.e. use Mie theory / Airy theory to compute the angular intensity distribution for a distribution of droplet sizes and then find the observed peak angle. This is the most physically relevant thing to compare to observations.
# Include detector/observer response (human eye sensitivity or camera spectral response), because observed brightness is filtered by that.
# After precision calculations, compute the predicted Δθ and compare to 0.47°. If promising, vary parameters (droplet radii, plasma lines, temperature) to see natural ranges and see whether the golden-angle coincidence is plausible.

I can do each of these steps for you. Step (1) alone (using precise n(λ)) will probably change the results by an amount comparable to what we need, so it’s the highest-value next step.