The study of molecular ions is relevant to many areas of scientific interest. Mid-infrared laser spectroscopy functions as a useful tool for understanding the role of molecular ions in these areas. To this end, a broadly tunable mid-infrared difference frequency generation noise-immune cavity-enhanced optical heterodyne molecular spectroscopy (NICE-OHMS) system has been developed and characteri...

The far-infrared spectroscopy of the troposphere (FIRST) instrument is a Fourier transform spectrometer developed to measure the Earth's thermal emission spectrum with a particular emphasis on far-infrared (far-IR) wavelengths greater than 15 μm. FIRST was developed under NASA's Instrument Incubator Program to demonstrate technology for providing measurements from 10 to 100 μm (1000 to 100 cm(-...

Calibration of MIDI, the Mid-infrared Interferometer for the VLTI MIDI is the MID-infrared Interferometric Instrument at the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI). It will perform long-baseline stellar interferometry in the N band (8. . . 13 μm). In the run-up of setting up MIDI, some preparatory tasks had to be solved concerning the calibration of the instrument in the laboratory. Being a...

The acquisition of reliable data strongly depends on experimental design. When studying the effects of light on processes such as behaviour and physiology it is crucial to maintain all environmental conditions constant apart from the one under study. Furthermore, the precise values of the environmental factors applied during the experiment should be known. Although seemingly obvious, these cond...

The sensitivity of Fourier transform infrared spectroradiometers to the polarization state of incident radiance can become significant in radiometric measurements of a partially polarized source such as the sea surface. At off-nadir incidence angles and wavenumbers below about 2750 cm21 (wavelengths longer than 3.6 mm), radiance from the sea surface is partially vertically polarized, because th...

FLEX is a concept for a fully OH suppressed near infrared integral field spectrograph, being developed at the AAO. FLEX will be the first instrument to employ fibre Bragg gratings for OH suppression, a radical new technology which cleanly suppresses the atmospheric OH emission lines at 30dB whilst maintaining a high overall throughout of ~90%. In this paper we simulate the expected performance ...

Detectors play a key role in an astronomical observatory. In astronomy, the role of the telescope and instrument is to bring light to a focus in effect, the telescope-instrument act as “spectacles”. The detectors, meanwhile, have the critical role of sensing the light the detectors are the “eyes” of an observatory. The performance of an astronomical observatory is directly dependent upon the pe...

A new method of deriving high-resolution topof-atmosphere spectral radiances in 10 181 bands, over the whole outgoing long-wave spectrum of the Earth, is presented. Correlations between different channels measured by the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interfermeter (IASI) on the MetOp-A (Meteorological Operation) satellite and unobserved wavenumbers are used to estimate far infrared (FIR) radian...

Currently two polar orbiting satellite instruments measure CO2 concentrations in the Earth’s atmosphere, while other missions are planned for the coming years. In the future such instruments might become powerful tools for monitoring changes in the atmospheric CO2 abundance and to improve our quantitative understanding of the leading processes controlling this. At the moment, however, we are st...

The new spectrometer of the Munich Aerosol Cloud Scanner (specMACS) is a multipurpose hyperspectral cloud and sky imager designated, but is not limited to investigations of cloud–aerosol interactions in Earth’s atmosphere. With its high spectral and spatial resolution, the instrument is designed to measure solar radiation in the visible and shortwave infrared region that is reflected from, or t...