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Introduction to Spectroscopy

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Using Commercial Amateur Astronomical Spectrographs

Part of the book series: The Patrick Moore Practical Astronomy Series ((PATRICKMOORE))

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Abstract

Anyone who has looked at a rainbow has surely found them to be interesting and beautiful. For a long time few people understood what they saw. It was Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727) who demonstrated what causes rainbows and some of the deeper characteristics of light. Newton took a glass prism and allowed a sliver (light through a small slit) of light to fall on it. What was seen on the other side of the prism was a rainbow of colors. White light was broken down into rainbow colors (Fig. 1.1).

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© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Hopkins, J.L. (2014). Introduction to Spectroscopy. In: Using Commercial Amateur Astronomical Spectrographs. The Patrick Moore Practical Astronomy Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01442-5_1

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