We discuss the design of an inexpensive, high-throughput CCD spectrograph for a small telescope. By using optical fibers to carry the light from the telescope focus to a table-top spectrograph, one can minimize the weight carried by the telescope and simplify the spectrograph design. We recently employed this approach in the construction of IntroSpec, an instrument built for the 16-inch Knowles Telescope on the Harvard College campus.
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0202233,
title = {Building a CCD Spectrograph for Educational or Amateur Astronomy},
author = {Sheila J. Kannappan and Daniel G. Fabricant and Charles B. Hughes},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0202233},
year = {2008}
}
Comments
17 pages including 7 figures, PASP, accepted (higher resolution figures at http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/~sheila/introspec.ps.gz)