Ted's Pictures
Ted Pederson took this amazing photo of the Century Theater through his spectrographic filter. I'll do my best to explain it, but if I were you, and really wanted to understand this complex image, I'd write to Ted.
To start with, this
picture seems to have multiple images. Actually, they are the same image,
separated spectrally. The bluer or shorter wavelengths of the image are shifted
up from, and the redder or longer wavelengths are shifted down from, their
actual physical positions. The long curved horizontal lines are neon or
neon-type other tubes, and they are emitting pure line spectra. It seems that
each neon-type tube is emitting multiple, distinct spectral lines, one for each
type of molecule in the tube.
The vertical
stripes are probably broadband white lights, whose spectrum gradually changes
colors over a wide portion of the picture.
Updated 8/3/2000