Need help flipping axis values

I am plotting a series of data from excel, however the values on the x & y axis are flipped.

This is what I currently have:

This is what I am trying to accomplish:

Answer 1

[Adam Danz]

Instead of plotting

plot(x,y)

plot

plot(y,x)

If you're using a different plotting function, the main idea is to just switch the x and y inputs.

If your input is a matrix, transpose it (which appears to be the case, judging from the axis ticks)

plot(x.')

[Chase Valo]

Flipping x and y does give this:

However, the numbers for the x and y axis are still reversed and transposing has no effect

[Adam Danz]

How did you get the the figure you shared in "what I want to accomplish"? Did you plot that in Matlab? Where did you get those data from?

One possibility is that you're dealing with different units between the two figures. For example, the x axis in your plot indicate units of meters while the y axis are m^-2. When I look at other irradiance plots, often times units are in nanometers in which case your values look OK. Here are examples where the range of values along the x and y axes are similar to yours.

source: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Global-spectral-irradiance-as-function-of-wavelength-for-different-values-of-the-air-mass_fig4_270954994

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_irradiance#Projection_effect

My guess is that your data and plot are fine but something is off with the other plot you're trying to copy - probably the units or maybe the axis ticks labels are incorrect.

Answer 2

[Star Strider]

I am not certain what the problem may be.

Using your previous code:

%Constants: 
h = 6.626e-34;
k = 1.381e-23;
c = 2.998e8;
t = 5800;
r_sun = 1.39e9/2;
r_earth = 1.5e11;
f_w = (r_sun/r_earth)^2;
%Function:
L_sun =@(l) f_w*((2*pi*h*c^2)./l.^5).*(1./(exp(h*c./(l*k*t))-1));

lambda = linspace(0.01, 3)*1E-6;

figure
plot(lambda, L_sun(lambda))
xt = get(gca, 'XTick');
set(gca, 'XTick',xt, 'XTickLabel',xt*1E+6)
xlabel('Wavelength (\mum)')
ylabel('Spectral Irradiance (Wm^{-2} \mum^{-1})')
text(1E-6, 1E9, '$\leftarrow L(\lambda) = f_{\nu} \frac{2\pi hc^2}{\lambda^2} \frac{1}{e^{\frac{something}{something else}-1}}$', 'Interpreter','latex', 'HorizontalAlignment','left')

produces: