Hologram With Mercury Light

One of the unique properties of holograms is that the size of the viewed image scales with the wavelength of the viewing light. Examine a hologram with mercury light to see that scaling. The mercury source has three prominent wavelengths and you can see three distinct images of different size. The use of an interference filter allows you to examine just one of the images at a time. At left is a movie of a hologram formed by making images at different angles and combining them into a short movie. You can grab the handle at the bottom of the movie and sweep it back and forth to get an impression of how the holographic image changes as you move your head.

This movie was made through a filter which passes the orange line. This filter is not as well matched to the line as in the case of the blue and green lines.