The purpose is to identify the chief lines of all the elements in a sample by producing ... including a Note on the various Types of Emission Spectra. Compiled by F. Twyman. Fourth edition.

Studying the line spectra produced by hot gases and absorbed by cooler gases allows us to identify the elements in stars. When a gas is very hot, it doesn’t emit all wavelengths of light.

When photons of light pass through a gas, the photons with the same energy as the energy gaps in the atoms can be absorbed. This causes an absorption spectra, as shown below. Because the energy ...

The first, somewhat furtive, signal from element 63 was recorded in 1885 by Sir William Crookes, who found an anomalous red line (609 nm) in the emission spectrum of a samarium sample.