File talk:Linear visible spectrum.svg

Latest comment: 14 years ago by Jacobolus in topic Accuracy

Accuracy edit

I find myself questioning how accurate a representation this is on the computer screen. For example I really cannot detect any traces of violet / purple in this at all. That end of the spectrum looks quite blue to me. I realize that computer displays are all different in their rendering of color and accuracy across them is problematic, but still I don't think my monitor is off so much as to make all shades of violet look blue, I can certainly see them in this article Purple and none of them there look blue.

Also there are several very distinctly brighter bands at yellow, green, blue, and red. Are these an natural phenomena of the sprectrum or artifact of it's computer display (and here I have less confidence that it might not specifically be my monitor). If the latter, I wonder if they could not be normalized out by adjusting the brightness along the spectrum.--Ericjs (talk) 16:34, 13 September 2008 (UTC)Reply

This should be discussed elsewhere – I suggest talk:visible spectrum. You’re right though that this doesn’t seem like the best possible representation. The sharp corners in lightness level have to do with the representation, not the spectrum. –jacobolus (t) 07:27, 30 March 2010 (UTC)Reply

Revert? edit

From the most recent revision: "(Added cyan band again, reduced luminosity to try to fit colour with NASA_Hydrogen_spectrum.jpg.)"

This seems misguided to me. The reason the spectrum in that image is muted is because it's actually not visible when viewing hydrogen through a spectrometer-- what you would see is like this:

 

The spectrum is only there as a reference so you can see where the lines fall.

In addition, especially on older CRTs, dark colors are harder to see. By darkening the entire image, it makes it more difficult for the hues to be distinguished.

Raucanum 00:13, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

I also think it should be reverted. The reference photo of the hydrogen spectrum is affected by the camera's imager's response. Also, the spectrum in that picture is purposefully darkened to bring out the brighter hydrogen lines. Here's a website dedicated to rendering the spectrum on a computer display: [1]. The old, brighter picture is much closer to the one on the website. Totsugeki (talk) 20:16, 1 December 2009 (UTC)Reply
This would be better discussed somewhere other than this image talk page, where few editors are likely to see it. I suggest talk:visible spectrum. –jacobolus (t) 07:26, 30 March 2010 (UTC)Reply