Аннотация:The powerful optical continuum of solar and stellar flares is hard to explain within the concept of the gasdynamic response of the chromosphere to the impulsive heating. It requires too large amount of accelerated particles, in contradiction with the hard X-ray observations. The resolution of this
trouble is to take into account the absorption of the short wavelength radiation of the hot flaring plasma by the optical emission source, i.e. the low temperature condensation. Our estimates show that this can help to explain the origin of the optical continuum of powerful impulsive flares on the Sun
and red dwarfs and superflares on the young G stars.