Abstract
At LNE-Cnam, the International Temperature Scale of 1990 (ITS-90) and thermodynamic temperature measurements above the silver point, are carried out with a radiance comparator. This instrument is, more generally, devoted to any radiance comparison in temperature range from the ambient to 3000 °C. The instrument developed in the early 1990s at LNE-Cnam has the advantage of being completely adjustable. Compared to compact radiation thermometers based on lenses and a narrow-band interference filter, the radiance comparator is only made of gold coated mirrors and a Czerny-Turner monochromator to select the spectral bandwidth. The instrument offers the possibility to tune the geometric extent and the slit scattering function. In return, the radiance comparator is a complex instrument that requires a complete and a regular characterisation at the highest level of accuracy. In the first part, this paper describes the instrument and its operating principle. In a second part, a complete study of the wavelength calibration, the slit scattering function, size of source effect, out-of-band transmittance, linearity and other main sources of uncertainty are presented and discussed. Their associated uncertainties are estimated separately and are grouped together to give an example of propagation of uncertainties when performing the ITS-90.
