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spectrum: Quick Facts

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The Information Architects of Encyclopaedia Britannica

The Information Architects maintain a master list of the topics included in the corpus of  Encyclopædia Britannica, and create and manage the relationships between them.
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Photos and Videos

A horizontal gradient bar displays the visible light spectrum from violet to red, labeled with corresponding frequency in terahertz, wavelength in nanometers, and photon energy in electron volts.
Spectrum of a lightning flash.
prism spreading light
solar spectrum
A horizontal diagram of the visible solar spectrum displays colors from violet to red, labeled with wavelength values in nanometers and prominent Fraunhofer lines marking where elements like hydrogen, magnesium, and sodium absorb light.
A diagram of Newton's prism experiment shows a beam of white sunlight entering a glass prism and emerging as a spread of colors labeled red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.
Diagram of the electromagnetic spectrum showing frequency, wavelength, and photon energy scales, with labeled regions for gamma rays, X-rays, ultraviolet, infrared, radar, microwaves, television, and radio waves. The visible light portion is highlighted and enlarged to the right, displaying its color range from violet to red.
Understand the science behind the formation of rainbows
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Related Topics and References

Topics

Key People

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Otto Struve
American astronomer
Karl Schwarzschild
Karl Schwarzschild
German astronomer
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Anders Jonas Ångström
Swedish physicist
Kirchhoff, Gustav
Gustav Kirchhoff
German physicist
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Williamina Paton Stevens Fleming
American astronomer
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Marcel Gilles Jozef Minnaert
Belgian astronomer
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Henry Draper
American astronomer
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Giovanni Battista Donati
Italian astronomer

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