A spectral simulation of neon, based on a representative hydro calculation.  The intrinsic spectrum (left) shows numerous lines of B-like through H-like neon, as well as a recombination edge (near 1200 eV) and recombination and free-free continua.  At 2 eV (center) and 5 eV (right) spectral resolution, many of the features are blended.  The 2 eV resolution spectrum is probably good enough to quantitatively test atomic/spectral models, whereas a lot of information is lost at a resolution of 5 eV.

In the next round of experiments, we’ll also measure emission spectra