The Effects of the Observational System and the Method of Interpolation on the Computation of Spectra

By subjecting functions of known spectral constitution to a conventional procedure of obtaining the spectral estimates, the combined effect of the observation system and the method of interpolation on the spectral estimates are statistically assessed. The results suggest that linear interpolation applied on currently available observations may produce spectral estimates that yield an overestimated value for the slope of the spectral profile in the range 10 ≲ k ≲ 20, where k is the hemisphere wavenumber.