February 18, 2026
Calibration sources for your spectrometer
A plain old white fluorescent tube works well.
You get a mix of mercury lines and lines from rare earth
phosphors that line the tube.
Germicidal bulb
Using one of these gets rid of the rare earth lines, but also exposes you to
lots of dangerous UV light unless you take precautions.
I happen to have two of these set up on only EPROM erasers.
Here is the spectrum I get:
The above uncalibrated spectrum starts somewhere around 380 nm. There are plenty of lines below that
(these are the UV lines the bulb is used to obtain).
Note that there are low, medium, and high pressure mercury lamps.
Feedback? Questions?
Drop me a line!
Tom's Mineralogy Info / tom@mmto.org
