February 9, 2025

The "Ingo" spectrometer project - Hardware

From Alan Koski -- some well known lines: 
H alpha    is red     at 656nm
Na D line   is yellow at 589nm
O III line   is green at 501nm
Ca II line  is violet  at 394nm
They say that the human eye can see from 380 nm (violet) to 700 nm (red).

Calibration lines

It has been suggested that you can grab a handy CFL and get a spectrum like this:

See this link:

1, 2, 5 are mercury
12 is europeium from EuY2O3 (a light phosphor)

Even handier is this annotated spectrum that Storm just sent me.

Storm says that the 611 nm peak (12) from the phosphor stays pretty constant regardless of the color temperature of the lamp. The three mercury peaks (1,2, and 5) and of course reliable.

It will be interesting to get my spectrometer working and see if I can get a spectrum like this.

Have any comments? Questions? Drop me a line!

Tom's Electronics pages / tom@mmto.org