The time‐integrated x‐ray emission from a hot, dense iron plasma has been recorded. The iron plasma was created when a target with a 1000‐A˚‐thick iron layer buried beneath 1000 A˚ of plastic was irradiated by a 300 fs pulse of 249 nm laser light at an intensity of approximately 1017W cm−2. Two models have been used to construct a synthetic x‐ray spectrum. The first employs detailed, spectroscopically accurate atomic data and the second uses a local thermodynamic equilibrium opacity model. The detailed model shows fairly good agreement with experiment whereas the opacity model only shows agreement in the gross features. ©1996 American Institute of Physics.