GOMOS is a medium resolution spectrometer covering the wavelength range from 250 nm to 950 nm. The high sensitivity requirement down to 250 nm has been a significant design driver leading to an all-reflective optical system design for the UVVIS part of the spectrum and to functional pupil separation between the UVVIS and the NIR spectral regions (thus no dichroic separation of UV). Due to the requirement of operating on very faint stars (down to magnitude 4 to 5), the sensitivity requirement to the instrument is very high. Consequently, a large telescope (30 cm × 20 cm aperture) had to be used to collect sufficient signal, and detectors with high quantum efficiency and very low noise had to be developed to achieve the required signal to noise ratios.
A hardware anomaly preventing nominal dissemination of Envisat Near Real
Time (NRT) data towards the PDHS-E (ESRIN) on-line archives since around
22:00 CET on 14 January 2010 has now been solved.
The processing chain is back to nominal operations and recovery of the NRT
data is expected to be completed shortly.