The failure or degradation of solar absorber tubes is the single largest cost factor for current parabolic trough solar power plant. The main failure reason is that there are residual stresses in the glass-to-metal joint which are generated during the cooling process of sealing. According to the thin shell theory and thermal stress theory, this paper presents the analytic solution for the glass-to-metal sealing residual stress. It also analyses how the thickness of glass tube, thickness of metal ring, and thermal expansion coefficient affect the residual stress distribution. In order to verify the calculation results, the photoelastic technique is used to measure the residual stress and the tensile test is used to obtain the point of the most dangerous stress and the tensile strength for the sealed specimens. It can be concluded that the maximum tensile stress happens at some distance near the sealing interface on the outer surface of glass tube. The seal strength increases when the thickness of the glass tube is increased. The analytic solution is proved feasible to analyze the residual stress of glass-to-metal seals in solar absorber tubes. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.