Spectroscopy

I'm curious to know, do any of you guys perfom spectroscopic techniques with your own personal astronomical equipment?
I have been doing it for some time, but it was mainly for my final year project which I had proposed.
Unfortuently the spectrometer which I was given by the college was insensitive to the needs of what I had originally desired. That was to detect known eclipsing binary star systems by plotting their photometric intensities over a period of time and then the ultimate task was to confirm the existance of a jupiter sized planet around a star other than our own one, a star known to possess a jupiter that is, through the same method.

But what I did end up finding, was the composition of the Venusian atmosphere. I was pleased with that at the end. I could also have found the composition of the Saturnian atmosphere aswell as some low magnitude stars too if I had used higher resolution spectrometer.
I therefore intend to invest in a high resolution spectrometer within the next year.
What sort of equipment do you guys use if you perfom spectroscopy via your telescope?

Hi Karl,

I have two spectrographs. One I designed and developed for wide field astronomy. See paper and abstarct:

A New Wide Field Spectrograph
Proc. SPIE 0277-786X Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation ...10.1117/12.464052
Abstract:
A spectrograph was designed and constructed to provide a new capability for measuring spectrum of extended emission line sources, but it has the versatility to work well on stellar bright moving sources for example emission nebulae and comets.

The spectrograph uses high-speed lens system. It projects the incoming wide field light through a horizontal moving slit assembly onto a reflective grating based on a rotary platform that is synchronised with the slit mechanism. The slit width is adjustable, as is the case in conventional spectrographs. An important part of the design is the lateral movement of the entire slit assembly (in addition to the movement of the slit itself), so that the narrow beam passing through the slit will reflect off different parts of the diffraction grating and be received by the camera in a scanning mode. As a result, this single device can cover a wide field of view across the range of spectra in a short duration of time. In fact it can obtain a spectrum of sky 3 x 3 degrees in a short timescale depending on the quantum efficiency and format size of the CCD detector.

The other spectrograph is a convemtional Czerny Turner type design used on one of my telescopes.

Eamonn A

Wow that spectrograph sounds nice!!! What do you use it for? Have you any images of your setup with that?

The spectrograph I used was a Czerny Turner type also. A fiber optic Ocean Optics 2000 spectrometer.

It would be interesting to use the spectroscope for testing narrow band filters to see how "good" they are.

For filters a standard laboratory UV/Visible spectrometer can be used for comparing line widths on band pass filters. I do have access to one. I have been tempted to run my new Baader filters through it and compare the bandwidth (after hours of course).

John, I would have really liked to put me ex-SCT O3 meade filter through the mills on that, just to see what the results would have been, maybe the Lumicon filters when I get them ?