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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 April 2016
Spectrometers give information on the chemical composition and physical properties of celestial objects. The Earth’s atmosphere restricts the observable spectra to windows in the absorption. Most of these windows are less than one octave wide. To increase the amount of information gained, it is necessary to increase the resolution of the spectrometers. With the advent of balloons, rockets and spacecraft, it is possible to make observations free from atmospheric absorption and it is possible to gain more information by increasing the bandwidth of spectrometers. This paper describes an infra-red Fourier transform spectrometer. The interferometer has a bandwidth of over one decade, from 500 to 5,000 cm-1, with a maximum resolution of 10 cm-1. The resolution can be electronically controlled. There are no absorbing or refracting parts in the interferometer and the resolution is limited by mechanical considerations.