New family of reflective spectrometers

Three kinds of spectrometers based on off-axis Schmidt and Schmidt-Cassegrain cameras are presented; they have been used for several instruments studies, mainly for European Space Agency and Agenzia Spaziale Italiana. Both dispersive prism and grating based configurations have interesting characteristics, such as: simplicity, low cost, high efficiency, small volume and weight, very low sensitivity to polarization and great flexibility also in multichannel (wavebands) configurations. The image quality is high, even with low relative apertures and great fields of view, allowing a very good correction of smile and keystone. The compensation of the slit curvature induced by a prism disperser is also demonstrated. This family of spectrometers was the topic of three patents, belonging to Selex-Galileo, while the intellectual property belongs to A. Romali et al. C (C) 2011 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE).