A Candle flame through a UWM spectroscope, revealing the yellow band that puzzled Fraunhofer

DO NOT POINT YOUR SPECTROSCOPE AT THE SUN AND POKE YOUR EYE INTO THE VIEWING HOLE!

You can use your spectroscope to look at the Sun's spectrum but not like that.  People who damage their eyes looking at the Sun get their retina cooked with the infrared.   Apparently this is a painless process.  You can reflect sunlight off a piece of white paper and safely look at the spectrum that way.

You can come up with your own design but the mini spectroscope designed by Alan Schwabacher of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is the best I have found. He has produced some excellent plans.    Hit the UWM logo to go to his page.

To test you spectroscope point it at a light source. A normal light bulb will give a continuous spectrum whilst fluorescent tubes and energy saving bulbs will give you bands.   If you have one of those plasma balls you will be seeing true emission lines.   You should see some bands of colour - three for TV screens.   If you have a look at sunlight reflected off white paper you will probably not see the Fraunhofer lines because they are masked by the spreading of the light in this simple design.  

Try looking at a candle flame but BE CAREFUL - its easy to tilt your head towards the flame and loose your hair or eyebrows !   You should see the yellow emission line that so puzzled Fraunhofer. If you want to have a go at recording the spectral bands of salts, arrange to do it in a chemistry lab with a Bunsen burner and use a webcam rather than your eye.