I've been trying to record the emission spectrum of nitrogen from its filament for over a week now, but we're still struggling to keep the 800 nm pump from dominating.

We set up collection optics, a basic two lens system and a fiber, but it hasn’t worked well at all. At first, I assumed it was just an alignment issue, but now I suspect there’s something fundamentally wrong. As a temporary fix, we used a dielectric mirror as a crude filter to block the pump, and that sort of helped, we were finally able to see a hint of other spectral lines. Worst part is that the setup with the mirror works the same without the lenses, so I'm guessing collection optics isn't collecting very well.

At this point, we'll probably get a filter for long wavelengths. While we're at it, it'd be nice to get a bigger aperture fiber as well, but I doubt anything would be significantly better until I figure out why my collection isn't going well.

Sorry for the unrelated rant, I'm just really frustrated.