Fabry-Perot Spectrometer Adjustment for the Compensation of Doppler Shift from Rapidly Rotating and Rapidly Flowing Sources

Abstract

The Doppler shift of light from a rapidly rotating or rapidly flowing source limits the spectroscopic resolution with which it can be studied using Fabry-Perot spectrometers that have the usual axial fringe adjustment. Because of the angular dependence of the wavenumber transmitted by the Fabry-Perot, the entrance aperture can be positioned off-axis at an angle chosen such that the wavenumber shift across the entrance aperture matches the shift presented by the source, thereby compensating for the Doppler effect. The principle can be extended to the Michelson interferometer for Fourier transform spectroscopy when the Michelson is used without field compensation. High resolution spectra obtained with a PEPSIOS spectrometer using the entire disk of Jupiter, a rapidly rotating planet, are presented as an example.