A foray into Spectroscopy

In January I acquired a `Star Analyser 100 spectroscope', a diffraction grating which screws into a 1.25-inch eyepiece just like a colour filter. Well, here are my first results captured with an Imaging Source DFK21 camera and processed with Valerie Desnoux's Visual Spec software which is excellent (and free!).



I used Sirius (spectral type A0V) to calibrate the image which has a resolution of 10.5 Angstroms per pixel. The final spectrum (green) is shown between 4000 and 7000 Angstroms (note my response curve has sadly missed the Halpha line at 6563 Angstroms) based on 17 seconds of raw video. The black curve shows a reference red supergiant spectrum of class M2.

Also shown for interest are the Balmer series of H lines (red) and Ti lines (blue).

Links

• Valerie Desnoux's Visual Spec page.
  
• Robin Leadbetter'sspectroscopy links.
  
• More spectroscopy links