Multispectral imaging (previously at Boing Boing) exposes paintings and other artifacts to specific wavelengths of radiation in hopes of revealing secrets—hidden paintings under finished works, for example, or the ghosts of subjects past. Ten pages of the famed Voynich Manuscript were imaged to learn more about the mysterious document, and the results have only just been comprehensively published.
Back in 2014, while working on a different imaging project at Yale University's Beinecke Library, the imaging team from The Lazarus Project (Michael Phelps (Early Manuscripts Electronic Library), Gregory Heyworth (then at University of Mississippi, now at University of Rochester), Chet Van Duzer (independent map scholar), Ken Boydston (Megavision) and Roger Easton (Rochester Institute of Technology)) was granted permission by the Library to take multispectral images of ten select pages of the Voynich Manuscript (a.k.a. Beinecke Library MS 408): 1r, 8r, 17r, 26r, 47r, 70v1, 71r, 93r, 102v1, and 116v. The intent was to make the images publicly available on the Yale website, but for various reasons (including staff turnover, development of Yale's new image platform, library backlogs, and COVID) the images were never posted. Details of several images were published on pp. 31-32 of The Voynich Manuscript (ed. Raymond Clemens), and a few have been explored by Voynich researchers (here and here, for example), but the full set of these MSI images has never been publicly seen or studied – until now.
Among the goodies revealed: an inscription naming a 16th-century alchemist in Prague, a roman alphabet in a margin, and what look like attempts to draw "Voynichese" characters. All interesting, and all consistent with a myriad of possibilities—hamfisted and destructive earlier efforts to decode or chemically expose the document most obviously amomg them.
We should make it clear up front that the imaging results have not yielded a decryption key (nor a secret map or anything of the sort) but the detailed write-up and freely-downloadable imaging results are fascinating reading for anyone interested in either the manuscript itself, or just how exactly multispectral imaging is applied to rare documents. Modern imaging techniques might get leveraged into things like authenticating sealed packs of Pokémon cards, but that's not all it can do.
Previously:
• Voynich Manuscript 'solution' rubbished by experts
• Voynich Manuscript partially decoded, text is not a hoax, scholar finds
• The Voynich Manuscript appears to be a fairly routine anthology of ancient women's health advice
• Voynich Manuscript online
• Similaries between The Voynich Manuscript and outsider art by people with schizophrenia
• Voynich manuscript dated to early renaissance
