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The black areas indicate where wavelengths are not emitted by sodium. No light is emitted with those wavelength values. The yellow lines are the only two colors of visible light emitted by excited sodium atoms.

sodium emission spectrum showing the two emission lines for sodium

 

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continuous spectrum for reference scale

The spectrum has "white" markers to help locate the 400nm , 500 nm , 600 nm wavelength positions. This continuous spectrum is supposed to be used to estimate the locations of the lines in the sodium spectrum.

 

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