used to bend the focused light for the distance sensing means to the same detection means 44 as is used to analyze the light from the object by choosing an array sensor as detection means the spectrometer can use part of the array sensor as spectral sensing means whereas the distance sensing means use the remaining part of the array sensor as spot detection means fig1 shows a three dimensional sketch of another preferred embodiment in which a dual channel spectrometer having diffractive optical elements 42 and aspheric mirrors 43 is combined with a distance sensing means this preferred embodiment is a planar version of the embodiment illustrated in fig1 and 11 in this preferred embodiment all reflective surfaces are placed below the respective faces of the front side and back side of the spectrometer and the base plate example 1 u201c simultaneous determination of spectral distribution from the object and the reference light source u201d an apparatus according to the one shown in fig1 was provided where the object was illuminated by a reference light source at an angle of 45 degrees the object was a calibrated white tile from npl uk the object distance d was 15 mm and the object was illuminated with a xenon light source the signals are read from the two channels in the array sensor s4801 256 from hamamatsu photonics jp fig1 shows the intensity i in arbitrary units versus pixel number n the solid line s represents the spectral distribution of the reference light source and the dashed line d represents the spectral.