Spaceborne limb hyperspectral imager for ozone profile detection

A spaceborne limb hyperspectral imager for ozone detection is designed and developed. The hyperspectral imager can provide the limb hyperspectral radiances images with wide-band and large dynamic range. It is composed of an off-axis parabolic telescope and prism dispersive off-axis aspheric spectrometer, and large dynamic range detection can be realized by using a band-attenuation filter. The spectral range is from 280nm to 1000nm, the field of view is 2.4 degrees (limb vertical direction) x 0.02 degrees (horizontal direction), and the focal length is 69mm. The design results meet the requirements of image quality and have the characteristics of small volume and light weight, thereby making it especially suitable for the application of space remote sensing unlike existing methods that utilize complicated scanning mirror and multiple color separators. The limb hyperspectral imager is measured and calibrated on ground. It detected limb hyperspectral radiances on Tiangong-2 spacecraft of China. (C) 2019 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement