On this page, we will answer the question we received most when working on this project -- "what will the fireworks look like through the mask?"

The light that you see from an individual shell is a combination of both blackbody radiation (a continuous spectrum) and an emission line spectrum. So if you look carefully through your mask, each point of light will create a spectrum with all of the colors of the rainbow -- red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. The shells contain metal salts, though, and when those are heated, they give off emission spectra, so on top of the rainbow of light you should see several discrete lines of color, just like in the sample spectra. However, pyrotechnicians don't use hydrogen or neon, they use metals like strontium, copper, and barium to create reds, blues, and greens in their fireworks.

Below are five images taken during 2008 by two Penn State astronomy graduate students, Stephen Redman and Steve Bongiorno, simply by holding up digital cameras to the mask:




Enlarged portion of the image above of a spectrum of one of the red sparks












Enlarged portion of the image above of a spectrum of one of the white sparks



Enlarged portion of the image above of a spectrum of one of the green sparks