2018.B.3.6. Compact Heterodyne Spectrometers for High Resolution Measurement of Emission Lines from CubeSats

Author(s)

Walter Harris (1)

University of Arizona, United States of America

Session

B.3

Keywords

Spectrometer, Emission line measurements

Abstract

A Spatial Heterodyne Spectrometer (SHS) is a self-scanning Fourier Transform device that combines high resolving power with large intrinsic etendue in a compact package. A major advantage of the SHS technique is that it can achieve spectral resolving powers exceeding 100000 without the need to place the instrument at the focus of a large aperture telescope. Instrument sizes in 1 the range of 1 to 1.5 U are possible with an instrument field of view of order 1 degree with sensitivity comparable to instruments at ground and space based observatories such as HST. We are developing SHS instruments in wavelength ranges extending from the extreme ultraviolet (30 nm) into the near infrared (1000-2000 microns) with performance bands ranging from a single emission feature (1 nm) to multi-order systems covering up to a decade in wavelength. I will describe the basic characteristics of the SHS and our progress toward developing them for flight programs.