Imaging spectrometer with a large field of view

An imaging spectrometer has been designed as a new instrument for remote sensing of the atmosphere. The design has been focused on applications in the field of weather forecast, climate research and atmosphere chemistry research. The push-broom type of instrument consists of a wide field of view (100 degrees) telescope, in combination with three spectral channels. The instrument operates without a scanning mirror. Each channel contains a grating, imaging optics and a state-of-the-art two-dimensional CCD detector. The channel separation is performed by a dichroic filter. A sunlit diffuser is applied for the in-flight radiometric calibration and the spectral calibration of the instrument. The polarization sensitivity is minimized by the application of a polarization scrambler. The basic instrument module consists of a UV-channel (270 - 350 nm), a visible channel (430-580 nm) and a NIR-channel (630-780 nm). The main new features of the instrument are a fast (between 1-2 days) and high-resolution (40 x 40 lan ground pixels) coverage of the atmosphere, in combination with high-resolution spectral measurements (resolution 0.3 nm to 0.4 nm). This performance is realized in a rather compact instrument. The modular instrument configuration enables an easy adaptation of the instrument for different spectral bands.