Some investigations about the Carson opacities

Accurate opacities for stellar composition mixtures are needed for all studies of stellar structure, evolution, stability, and pulsation. Three problem areas where increased opacities would be welcome are: the observed broadening of the upper main sequence that can be produced with larger opacities that tend to expand the stars; the existence of the double-mode Cepheids and their anomalously low period ratios which can be predicted to be lower, as observed, if opacities are larger; and the small sensitivity of the low mass population II horizontal branch luminosity to the metal content of their compositions that would be more effective if their opacity were increased. Several other problems that could be solved by larger opacities have been widely discussed, but we feel that they are not justifiably an opacity problem. The conclusion of our considerations are that the Thomas-Fermi method for getting opacities used by Carson and his collaborators does not produce values appreciably different from those obtained without this method at Los Alamos, and that these persistent astrophysical problems must be solved in other ways. We here propose a possible error in the Carson opacities, and, further, we mention another that seems to be the correct reconciliation between these two opacity sets