Electro-optical spectrometer

Abstract

Abstract An electronic image-encoder with an SEC vidicon in which the electron beam is positioned according to a coordinate pair stored as digital signals and applied as analog signals to the deflection coils of the vidicon. This permits the beam to read selected points on the vidicon target and the beam is blanked until the desired deflection signals are applied. In one version of the device, the deflection signals are simply voltages corresponding to the values of the digital signals. In another version, one digital signal is converted to an analog deflection voltage and a standard ramp is used as the other deflection voltage, the beam being turned on to read only after a time interval following initiation of the ramp, which interval is proportional to the other digital signal. A special application of the encoder incorporates a crosseddispersion optical system for projecting several stacked spectral orders into the vidicon target. In all cases, the electron beam actuation provides an output signal corresponding to the image intensity at the point selected by the digital signal pair, and this output signal is digitized for storage, manipulation or display.

Inventors

• 👤 Tomas Hirschfeld

Bibliographic Details