A spectral color is a color that is evoked by a single wavelength of light in the visible spectrum, or by a relatively narrow band of wavelengths. Every wavelength of light is perceived as a spectral color, in a continuous spectrum; the colors of sufficiently close wavelengths are indistinguishable.
The spectrum is often divided up into named colors, though any division is somewhat arbitrary: the spectrum is continuous. Traditional colors include: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet.
The division used by Newton, in his color wheel, was Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet; a mnemonic for this order is Roy G. Biv. In modern divisions of the spectrum, indigo is often omitted as simply a tone of blue or violet.
Read more about Spectral Color: Non-spectral Colors
Famous quotes containing the words spectral and/or color:
“How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a spectre through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral throat?”
—Joseph Conrad (1857–1924)
“Gradually I regained my usual composure. I reread Pale Fire more carefully. I liked it better when expecting less. And what was that? What was that dim distant music, those vestiges of color in the air? Here and there I discovered in it and especially, especially in the invaluable variants, echoes and spangles of my mind, a long ripplewake of my glory.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)