Beam profile for the Herschel-SPIRE Fourier transform spectrometer

Appl Opt. 2013 Jun 1;52(16):3864-75. doi: 10.1364/AO.52.003864.

Abstract

One of the instruments on board the Herschel Space Observatory is the Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver (SPIRE). SPIRE employs a Fourier transform spectrometer with feed-horn-coupled bolometers to provide imaging spectroscopy. To interpret the resultant spectral images requires knowledge of the wavelength-dependent beam, which in the case of SPIRE is complicated by the use of multimoded feed horns. In this paper we describe a series of observations and the analysis conducted to determine the wavelength dependence of the SPIRE spectrometer beam profile.