Every once in awhile, a small green glow occurs in the rear area of one of my 5092 tubes. The glow stops when the digit is turned-off, and does not reappear again if the tube is re-energized even after multiple tries. Then, perhaps days or weeks later, it reappears when the tube is energized.
Unfortunately I can't easily check the current to see if it's significantly different when the green discharge occurs. The digit glows fully in it's normal color, so there's no obvious harm. I see that neon has multiple spectral lines, including green, so perhaps this is a discharge between internal nodes of the tube, and for some strange reason it's favoring a different spectral line ??? Green is a shorter wavelength than the dominant orange, so I'm inclined to think there is a higher field strength present in that region, thereby causing excitation to a higher state hence the different color, but the fallacy in that idea is that the green glow is a fairly rare event. I would expect that if the internals in that region were closer together, for whatever reason, that the green glow would always occur; it doesn't. It's been doing this randomly for more than a year now. It's entirely different than the blue dots I've seen on tubes that have been sitting on the shelf for years, because those go away after a few minutes or hours of usage. I suspect that's from mercury that has collected locally, and is subsequently distributed after the tube is energized. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/1711f3b9-1948-4a2d-ba6b-8e24e20d5a22%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
