Thought I'd share this. I recently acquired an L200 spectrograph. For those who don't know this is a littrow spectrograph similar to the shelyak L-Hires instrument. One of the main differences being this provided as a kit for home build, hence it comes in at around 1/4 price. Well I was lucky enough to acquire the very last available kit from the current batch of these. I took lots of photos during the build and will write them up later.
Anyway on to the subject matter. I had a first light with this last evening. Arcturus was well up in the south-east. The following is 5 x 60 seconds and is calibrated with a neon reference lamp. I must have bumped something between taking the sequence and the neon calibration frame as everything is shifted about 7 angstroms to the red. However it still is in very good keeping with published reference spectra for a KIII type star. The domain measured was 5920 - 7000 angstroms (red to infra-red) and resolution is 1.5angstroms/pixel.
www.webtreatz.com/gallery/displayimage.php?pos=-105
Image was taken through C14 at f/10 and ST8 binned 2x2.
I'm looking forward to having lots of fun with this as the resolution R=3000 is plenty good enough to measure stellar radial velocities, classifications, determining spectroscopic binaries and even galactic red shifts.
Will post more as it happens.
Clear skies,
Dave.
  