Artist’s impression of Herschel’s SPIRE instrument (without annotations)

The Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver (SPIRE) consists of a three-band imaging photometer centred at 250, 350 and 500 micrometres, and an imaging Fourier Transform Spectrometer (FTS) covering 200-670 micrometres. The detectors are arrays of feedhorn-coupled NTD spider-web bolometers cooled to 0.3 K. SPIRE was developed by a consortium led by Cardiff University (UK).