ASTR 3520: SBO Spectrometer

A few things to note about the spectrometer:

    1. FOCUSING THE COLLIMATOR
    Using a narrow slit, take images of the comparison lamp. You want the spectral lines to be as narrow as possible. If they are more than a few pixels wide you are not focused.
    2. PICKING YOUR SLIT
    Any slit will do for stellar spectroscopy. The tradeoffs are resolution and exposure time. A wider slit allows more light to pass through it, and therefore requires less time. A narrower slit will reduce the blurring caused by overlapping spectra - think about slitless spectroscopy: if you spread a continuum over a detector, if there is an image at each wavelength the images will overlap. So a narrower slit limits that overlap to the width of the slit
    3. ROTATING THE SLIT
     To rotate the slit angle on the sky, you have to rotate the whole turret. This requires first loosening the gold knob, then rotating. The turret is the big white round thing the eyepiece is attached to, the gold knob is located about 180 degrees from the eyepiece.
     WARNING: the turret has a lot of wires attached to it. Don't pull on them too much
    4. COMP LAMPS
      There are TWO comp lamps: Neon and HeAr. The Neon lamp appears orange, the HeAr lamp appears pink. If both are on, it will be pinkish-orange. You can turn the Neon lamp off by unplugging it. The HeAr lamp has a power switch on its power cord


Data from the SBO 24" telescope spectrometer

To transfer data from the 24" telescope to your home directory, use the program "WinSCP". Login to cosmos.colorado.edu with your normal username and password.
The software at SBO saves the fits files generated as .fit files. Josh Walawender's solution also changes the stored variable type to signed (+/-) integer.


ASTR3520 home

Created 10/8/07 by (adam.ginsburg@colorado.edu)