A field compensated interference spectrometer for spectroscopy of the night airglow in the visible region

Abstract

A Michelson Fourier-transform spectrometer has been constructed for the visible and near infrared regions. An etendue of 0.1 cm 2 sr has been achieved by field-compensating glass prisms. This is about 1000 times greater than that available with the best grating spectrometers in the same conditions. The instrument has been used to obtain several spectra of the Night Airglow from 4300 Å to 6000 Å at resolving powers of up to 10 4 .