Nave, G.
and Madison, W.
(2017),
The use of a commercial scanner for digitizing spectroscopic photographic plates, Review of Scientific Instruments, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=922252
(Accessed October 1, 2025)
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The use of a commercial scanner for digitizing spectroscopic photographic plates
Published
Author(s)
, Wyatt Madison
Abstract
We have tested the suitability of a commercial flatbed scanner for digitizing photographic plates used for spectroscopy. The scanner has a bed size of 420 mm by 310 mm and a pixel size of about 10 um. Our tests show that the closest line pairs that can be resolved with the scanner are 24 um apart, only slightly larger than the resolution of 21 um expected by the pixel size. We measured periodic errors in the scanner using both a calibrated length scale and a photographic plate. We found that periodic errors are less than 1 um in the direction parallel to the linear detector in the scanner, but have an amplitude of 30 um to 50 um in the direction perpendicular to the detector. We conclude that the scanner is suitable for digitizing spectroscopic plate provided that they are scanned with the dispersion direction parallel to the linear detector in the scanner.Citation
Review of Scientific Instruments
Pub Type
Journals
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Keywords
Visible and ultraviolet spectra, Instruments for ultraviolet spectroscopy, photodetectors
Citation
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Created April 21, 2017