The UV-visible absorption of retinal in its protonated Schiff-base form is studied in the gas phase. In particular, transitions to highly-excited electronic states, S_n, in the all-trans and 11-cis forms are considered, and several new states are discovered. Their positions and strengths are compared to state of the art quantum calculations. The location of these states are particularly important when new fs pump–probe experiments are designed to investigate the fast excited-state dynamics of retinal chromophores.