Two astronomical spectrographs were constructed and were attached in turn to a 30 cm Schmidt Cassegrain telescope

Abstract

Presented at 2004 AAS Meeting in San Diego, CA

Two astronomical spectrographs were constructed and were attached in turn to a 30 cm Schmidt Cassegrain telescope. The first used a 90˚ angle configuration, 600 lines/mm diffraction grating, 40 mm collimation lens, and a 55 mm camera lens, and spectra were captured with a digital SLR camera. This spectrograph had a range of 6000 A but had a spectral resolution of only19 A. Next a classical spectrograph with an overall angle of 38˚ was constructed. The second design used a 135 mm f.l. collimation lens, 600 l/mm grating, and 50 mm f 1.2 camera lens on a SBIG ST-7E CCD camera. It produced higher resolution spectra, with a range of 2013 A and a spectral resolution of 8 A. Wavelength callibration was performed with an Hg lamp. CCDOPS was used to acquire images and SBIG’s Spectra and Desnoux’s Visual Spec programs were used to wavelength and flux calibrate spectra. The stellar classes of stars and the elemental composition of nebulae were then inferred. Successful innovations included a slit with zeroth order imaging window and a method for high resolution calibrated slitless spectroscopy.

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Last updated June 14, 2006