Spectrometer

A spectrometer is a scientific instrument used to separate and measure spectral components of a physical phenomenon. The cited article says the term is broad and often used to describe instruments that measure a continuous variable of a phenomenon where the spectral components are somehow mixed, that in visible light a spectrometer can separate white light and measure individual narrow bands of color, called a spectrum, and that a mass spectrometer measures the spectrum of the masses of the atoms or molecules present in a gas. Spectrometers were developed in early studies of physics, astronomy and chemistry. Instruments recorded in the atlas as spectroscopic instruments are grouped under this concept.