Shimmer: a spatial heterodyne spectrometer for remote sensing of Earth’ middle atmosphere

It is well known and demonstrated that interference spectroscopy offers capabilities to obtain passive remote optical sensing spectra of high precision and also achieves economies in size, cost, and ease of deployment compared with more conventional systems. We describe the development of a near-ultraviolet spatial heterodyne spectrometer designed for remote sensing of the global distribution of the hydroxyl radical OH in the Earth's middle atmosphere. The instrument, known as SHIMMER (Spatial Heterodyne Imager for Mesospheric Radicals), is expected to obtain its first OH measurement from space in early 2002 from the Space Shuttle.