to the rows of photo detectors in the detector 106 the rows form the second dimension of the array and are arranged along the y axis 142 the spectrometer 105 projects light received from each separate signal path or channel 104 1 104 7 onto separate groups 152 1 152 7 of light sensitive photo detector rows in the detector 106 the y axis 142 corresponds to the signal path channels 104 1 104 7 in this embodiment the detector 106 simultaneously images spectra 154 1 154 n i e light at a particular wavelength received from each of the sample locations 120 1 120 n respectively and thereby simultaneously detects and records the intensity of light as a function of wavelengths for light that is received from all n samples the detector 106 outputs image data representative of the light intensity as a function of wavelength for each imaged spectra 154 1 154 n and hence each separate light signal output from the output optical fibers 161 1 116 n the output data is processed by a data acquisition device which is a device that gathers displays and records the image data fig5 illustrates an example of the output from the detector 106 and the data acquisition device in this example output from the first output optical fiber 116 1 is illustrated as a plot of wavelength versus light intensity for light detected from each signal path or channel.