Renaissance in diatomic spectroscopy

New technological developments resulted in several periods of renaissances of spectroscopy, the period on microwaves and later the period with lasers, and led to developments of new models for description of observations, thus to understanding the underlying physics. Today, the exciting period of cold molecules has started and demands for new data from molecular spectroscopy and completion in their modeling. This contribution will describe the status of understanding before the era of “cold molecules” and note open questions when entering the field of cold molecules. Because large varieties of cold molecules are studied, like deeply bound (about 1eV) or very weakly bound (less than 10−7 eV) ones, the spectroscopic tools and the theoretical descriptions have to be largely extended. We will describe recent success regarding different molecules of diatomic alkaliand alkaline-earth atoms as examples and will show how to use the often huge body of spectroscopic data for obtaining predictions for optimal paths ...