Calibration and Flight of a Balloon-Borne O2 Atmospheric Band Fabry-Perot Spectrometer

The Fabry-Perot spectrometer is an extremely useful tool for retrieving spectral information of the Oxygen A-band at nadir viewing angles, as well as for remote sensing purposes. Testing the performance of this spectrometer will help us determine possible limitations and improvements needed to be carried out for future missions, so that the scientific objectives can be met successfully. For the calibration setup, a narrow line argon source was used and the procedure was carried out by varying the gap spacing between the etalon plates, thus performing step scans that cover the entire free spectral range. Valuable information can be acquired, such as the reflective Finesse of the etalon, the degree of parallelism and flatness of the plates, as well as the temperature coefficient of the etalon. Measurements were also performed on O2 interference filters, making use of a diffraction grating spectrometer, in order to understand their behavior with temperature change