Previous | Session 139 | Next
A.K. Kutyrev (SSAI/NASA's GSFC), C.L. Bennett, S.H. Moseley (NASA's GSFC), D. Rapchun (GST/NASA's GSFC), K. Stewart (NRL)
We developed and built a high resolution near-infrared temperature tunable cryogenic spectrometer with solid Fabry-Perot etalons. Using silicon etalons allowed to build a very compact high throughput spectrometer, that is equivalent to a much larger gas spaced Fabry-Perot interferometer. The whole spectrometer is cryogenically cooled to reduce thermal background radiation. The instrument is used in a non-imaging integral mode with the telescope pupil imaged onto the detector: all sources contribute equally to the resulting spectrum. The instantaneous spectral coverage of the instrument is 300 km/s at a resolving power of 12000. With a small telescope of 12.5" in diameter and 30' field of view the instrument is optimized for large scale diffuse objects studies. First observations the diffuse Brackett-gamma emission line of hydrogen from the inner Galactic plane has been carried out with this spectrometer last summer at Mauna Kea observatory. A number of fields in the Galactic plane at longitudes 355 to 35 degrees with 1 degree step have been observed.
This project is supported by NASA funding.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: kutyrev@stars.gsfc.nasa.gov
Previous | Session 139 | Next
Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 36 5
© 2004. The American Astronomical Society.