Abstract: A spatial heterodyne spectrometer has a two beam dispersive interferometer which includes a diffraction grating as a beam splitter/combiner. An incoming beam is collimated and passed to the grating in the interferometer where it is split into two beams which are recombined such that the angle between the wavefronts in the recombined beam at a particular wavelength is directly related to the deviation of that wavelength from a null wavelength at which the wavefronts are parallel. The recombined output beam is focused and imaged to produce Fizeau fringes across the output aperture, with these fringes being recorded on an imaging detector. The spatially varying intensity output of the imaging detector is Fourier transformed to yield an output indicative of the spectral frequency content of the image which is related to the wavelength content of the incoming beam from the source.