The OSIRIS instrument on the Odin spacecraft

The optical spectrograph and infrared imager system (OSIRIS) on board the Odin spacecraft is designed to retrieve altitude profiles of terrestrial atmospheric minor species by observing limb-radiance profiles. The grating optical spectrograph (OS) obtains spectra of scattered sunlight over the range 280-800 nm with a spectral resolution of approximately 1 nm. The Odin spacecraft performs a repetitive vertical limb scan to sweep the OS 1 km vertical field of view over selected altitude ranges from approximately 10 to 100 km. The terrestrial absorption features that are superimposed on the scattered solar spectrum are monitored to derive the minor species altitude profiles. The spectrograph also detects the airglow, which can be used to study the mesosphere and lower thermosphere. The other part of OSIRIS is a three-channel infrared imager (IRI) that uses linear array detectors to image the vertical limb radiance over an altitude range of approximately 100 km. The IRI observes both scattered sunlight and the airglow emissions from the oxygen infrared atmospheric band at 1.27 mum and the OH (3-1) Meinel band at 1.53 mum. A tomographic inversion technique is used with a series of these vertical images to derive the two-dimensional distribution of the emissions within the orbit plane.