An actual laser diffraction pattern

I took the picture below by sending red laser light through a single slit of width 0.08 mm in a darkened room. The light travelled a distance of 6.05 meters to a projection screen. I took a photograph of the screen from a distance of 4.05 meters with a Nikon D50 camera, using a 55mm lens at f/5.6 in raw format. Each pixel is about 7.88 microns on a side. I exposed for three seconds and applied the automatic dark correction.

Download a data file with intensity as a function of position
The format is two columns: first pixel number, then intensity, like this:
```
      900  5097.00
      901  5194.00
      902  5064.00
      903  6013.00
   
```
Note that the central region, roughly between pixels 1400 and 1550, is saturated, so the recorded intensity is far smaller than the actual intensity.