| Preface | p. ix |
| Acknowledgements | p. xi |
| A brief history of spectroscopy | p. 1 |
| The relevant regions of the electromagnetic spectrum | p. 6 |
| The limits of optical spectrography | p. 8 |
| Geometrical optics | p. 10 |
| Rays and wavefronts | p. 10 |
| Instrumental optics | p. 11 |
| Centred systems | p. 12 |
| Gaussian optics | p. 12 |
| Optical layout | p. 20 |
| Apertures, stops, fields, irises and pupils | p. 20 |
| Ray bundles | p. 23 |
| The Helmholtz-Lagrange invariants | p. 23 |
| Surface brightness | p. 25 |
| Black body radiation | p. 25 |
| Optical aberrations | p. 28 |
| The Seidel aberrations | p. 29 |
| Zero-order aberration | p. 29 |
| First-order aberrations | p. 29 |
| Theorems | p. 35 |
| Aberration coefficients for mirrors | p. 37 |
| The achromatic doublet | p. 39 |
| Fourier transforms: a brief revision | p. 41 |
| Fourier transforms | p. 41 |
| Theorems | p. 42 |
| Convolutions | p. 42 |
| The Wiener-Khinchine theorem | p. 45 |
| Useful functions | p. 45 |
| More theorems | p. 49 |
| Aliasing | p. 51 |
| Physical optics and diffraction | p. 52 |
| Fraunhofer diffraction | p. 52 |
| Two-dimensional apertures and oblique incidence | p. 55 |
| The prism spectrograph | p. 57 |
| Introduction | p. 57 |
| The traditional prism spectrograph | p. 57 |
| The focal curve theorem | p. 59 |
| The Littrow mounting | p. 59 |
| The Pellin-Broca prism | p. 60 |
| Focal isolation | p. 61 |
| The plane grating spectrograph | p. 63 |
| The shape of a monochromatic line spectrum | p. 63 |
| Blazing of gratings | p. 67 |
| Apodising | p. 68 |
| Order overlap and free spectral range | p. 69 |
| Grating ghosts and periodic errors | p. 70 |
| The complete grating equation | p. 72 |
| Differential dispersion | p. 76 |
| Mounting configurations | p. 76 |
| The concave grating spectrograph | p. 89 |
| The Rowland grating | p. 89 |
| The concave grating as a spectrograph | p. 92 |
| The concave grating as a monochromator | p. 96 |
| The aberrations of the Rowland grating | p. 97 |
| Practical details of design | p. 98 |
| The interference spectrograph | p. 101 |
| The phase angle | p. 101 |
| The Fabry-Perot etalon spectrograph | p. 102 |
| Fabry-Perot theory | p. 102 |
| The Fabry-Perot monochromator | p. 104 |
| The Fabry-Perot CCD spectrograph | p. 108 |
| Fore-optics | p. 110 |
| Reference fringes | p. 111 |
| Extraction of the spectrum | p. 111 |
| Choice of the resolution and gap | p. 112 |
| The 'crossed' Fabry-Perot spectrograph | p. 113 |
| The multiplex spectrometer | p. 114 |
| The principles of Fourier spectrometry | p. 114 |
| The multiplex advantage | p. 117 |
| Detectors | p. 120 |
| Silver halide photography | p. 121 |
| Elementary electronic detectors | p. 122 |
| Detectors with spatial resolution | p. 123 |
| Exposure limitations | p. 124 |
| CCD software | p. 125 |
| CCD calibration | p. 126 |
| Spectrograph calibration | p. 126 |
| Auxiliary optics | p. 128 |
| Fore-optics | p. 128 |
| The astronomical telescope as fore-optics | p. 130 |
| Focal reducers | p. 132 |
| Schmidt-camera spectrography | p. 134 |
| Scattered light and baffling | p. 134 |
| Absorption cells | p. 136 |
| Fibre optical input | p. 137 |
| Optical design | p. 139 |
| First steps | p. 139 |
| Initial layout | p. 139 |
| The drawing board | p. 140 |
| Computer ray tracing | p. 140 |
| Refinement of the optical design | p. 141 |
| Requirements of a ray-tracing program | p. 144 |
| Mechanical design and construction | p. 150 |
| The optical layout | p. 150 |
| Optical materials | p. 162 |
| Transparent optical materials | p. 163 |
| Reflectors | p. 163 |
| Metals for construction | p. 165 |
| Other materials | p. 167 |
| Calibration | p. 168 |
| Sensitivity calibration | p. 168 |
| Wavelength calibration | p. 169 |
| Small spectral shifts and radial-velocity measurement | p. 170 |
| Absorption measurements | p. 170 |
| The alignment of a spectrograph | p. 172 |
| The optical alignment | p. 172 |
| The focus | p. 173 |
| Optical aberrations | p. 175 |
| Wavelengths of spectral lines for calibration | p. 179 |
| The evolution of a Fabry-Perot interference spectrograph | p. 183 |
| The common calibration curve in silver halide spectrophotometry | p. 186 |
| Bibliography | p. 187 |
| Index | p. 188 |
| Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved. |
