As a spectroscopist with a long-standing interest in molecular hydrogen, I welcome, with enthusiasm, the publication of the vacuum ultraviolet emission lines of H₂ This atlas will be of immense help to all of those who want to study further the H₂ spectrum in the VUV or identify it in observed spectra both in the laboratory and in space. The authors have greatly increased the usefulness of the atlas by their simultaneous publications with colleagues of the detailed analysis of the Lyman and Werner bands Further assignments of so far unassigned lines will be made much easier and will likely lead to many new results. For a long time, this atlas will stand as the last word on the vacuum ultraviolet spectra of H₂