The Michelson spectrograph is similar to the instrument used in the Michelson–Morley experiment. Light from the source is split into two beams by a half-silvered mirror, one is reflected off a fixed mirror and one off a movable mirror, which introduces a time delay—the Fourier-transform spectrometer is just a Michelson interferometer with a movable mirror. The beams interfere, allowing the temporal coherence of the light to be measured at each different time delay setting, effectively converting the time domain into a spatial coordinate. By making measurements of the signal at many discrete positions of the movable mirror, the spectrum can be reconstructed using a Fourier transform of the temporal coherence of the light. Michelson spectrographs are capable of very high spectral resolution observations of very bright sources.
The Michelson or Fourier-transform spectrograph was popular for infra-red applications at a time when infra-red astronomy only had single-pixel detectors. Imaging Michelson spectrometers are a possibility, but in general have been supplanted by imaging Fabry–Pérot instruments, which are easier to construct.