A Practical Non-Scanning FTS for Astronomy

Astronomical stellar spectrometers have traditionally been based on classical slit/grating designs, which have the considerable advantage of easy incorporation of multi-channel array detectors. With current optical, diffraction grating, and array detector technologies, and for constant optical efficiency, high resolution instruments of this type are found to scale in physical size roughly linearly with telescope aperture. For moderate spectral resolutions and existing telescopes, the ability to record simultaneously a substantial length of spectrum has generally been thought to be an advantage outweighing the inelegant and moderately costly nature of the instruments.