Progress in iron transmission measurements relevant to the solar convection/radiation boundary

Iron plasma opacity influences the internal structure of the sun. However, opacity models have never been experimentally tested at stellar interior conditions. Recent iron opacity experiments at the Sandia Z facility reached 195 eV temperatures, nearly the same as the solar convection/radiation zone boundary (CZB), at electron densities that are roughly 1/2 the solar CZB value. Progress to solidify these results and use them to examine the physical underpinnings of opacity models will be described.