Abstract
Spectroscopy is at the heart of astrophysics, and indeed, it is usually spectroscopic observations and their interpretation which provide the strongest constraints on the models proposed by astrophysicists. There are a great many examples: energy balance, abundance of molecules, atoms, ions, or other particles, macroscopic or microscopic velocity fields, local physical conditions such as the temperature, the density, the magnetic or electric fields, states of equilibrium or of deviation from equipartition of energy, and so on.
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- 1.
Methods for inverting the transfer equation are discussed in Rybicki G. B., Lightman P., Radiative Process in Astrophysics, Wiley, 1979 and also Kourganoff V., Introduction to Advanced Astrophysics, Reidel, 1980.
- 2.
The introduction of the figure of merit and comparison between grating, Fourier, and Fabry–Pérot spectrographs is very clearly explained in Jacquinot P., J.O.S.A. 44, 761, 1954.
- 3.
See www.unige.ch/sciences/astro/ for HARPS.
- 4.
- 5.
See www.eso.org/instruments/sinfoni/ for more details.
- 6.
Herschel is a European space mission for 2008–2012, designed to study submillimetre radiation and equipped with three instruments, including the PACS. The latter is described in more detail at pacs.mpe.mpg.de.
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Some authors make a distinction between the spectrograph, which requires a reference for calibration, and the spectrometer, which, as in this case, is intrinsically accurate in its wavelength calibration.
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- 9.
Charles Fabry (1867–1945), French physicist and optician, and Alfred Perot (1863–1925), French physicist, worked together at the Marseille Observatory to build a multiple-wave interferometer, and started a strong tradition of optical development there. They both taught at the Ecole polytechnique in France.
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- 11.
See www.iram.fr/textsciramfr/arn/dec02/node6.html.
- 12.
See www.apex-telescope.org/instruments for details of the fast Fourier transform (FFT) mode.
- 13.
This telescope, carried by a B 747 aircraft, is operated by NASA and the German space agency Deutsches Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR). It made its first flight in 2007 (see Sect. ??).
- 14.
CASIMIR is described at www.sofia.usra.edu/Science/instruments/.
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© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Léna, P., Rouan, D., Lebrun, F., Mignard, F., Pelat, D. (2012). Spectral Analysis. In: Observational Astrophysics. Astronomy and Astrophysics Library. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-21815-6_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-21815-6_8
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