Calibrating on the SpectralWorkbench.org website

You can calibrate your spectra or your spectrometer because the spectrum of a compact fluorescent light bulb is well known. Two lines in particular are very stable and easy to recognize:

• Mercury 2 line: "middle blue line" at 435.833 nanometers
• Mercury 3 line: "bright green line" at 546.074 nanometers

Click the Calibrate button and you'll be guided through identifying and clicking on each of these lines. Once you've calibrated a single spectrum, you'll be able to apply that calibration to all of the spectra you collected with that instrument.

Watch this video for a walkthrough of the whole process:

Known issues

There is still a bug in the code that can cause odd calibration results -- Jeff needs to fix it (sorry!). Try pressing "re-extract" than after it clears the previous calibration, clicking "calibrate" again and following the instructions once more. Try comparing your calibration to another (search for "CFL calibration").

Custom calibrations

You can calibrate a spectrum with 2 known pixel positions and corresponding wavelength values with the following URL format:

https://spectralworkbench.org/spectrums/calibrate/?x1=242&w1=554&x2=483&w2=780

Where is the ID of your spectrum, x1 and x2 are the pixel locations, and w1 and w2 are the wavelengths for those positions.