A small section of a VLC raw spectrum (star seen through the iodine cell; broad absorption features are stellar lines whereas narrow lines were introduced by the molecular iodine gas). The 14 slices span 400 pixels. The bright feature to the left near pixel row 2300 is a grating ghost. The area on the left side has a lower bias. The readout register is in the lower right corner of the chip (parallel clocking down, serial clocking to the right). Deeper stellar lines near row 2300 and 2700 have tails to the left and right. The intensity scale is non-linear to bring out the discussed effects.