Image plane detector spectrophotometer: application to O(2)atmospheric band nightglow.

ABSTRACT

A new variety of low resolution spectrometer is described. This device, an image plane detector spectrophotometer, has high sensitivity and modest resolution sufficient to determine the rotational temperature and brightness of molecular band emissions. It uses an interference filter as a dispersive element and a multichannel image plane detector as the photon collecting device. The data analysis technique used to recover the temperature of the emitter and the emission brightness is presented. The atmospheric band of molecular oxygen is used to illustrate the use of the device.