Khayyam, a tunable, cyclical spatial heterodyne spectrometer on Mt. Hamilton
Affiliation
Univ Arizona, Lunar & Planetary LabIssue Date
2020-02-12Keywords
spectrometryhigh spectral resolution
spatial heterodyne spectrometer
extended diffused targets
lick observatory
Mt. Hamilton
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Hosseini, S., & Harris, W. M. (2020). Khayyam, a tunable, cyclical spatial heterodyne spectrometer on Mt. Hamilton. Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems, 6(1), 015005.Rights
© 2020 SPIE.Collection Information
This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at repository@u.library.arizona.edu.Abstract
We describe the design considerations, installation, and technical challenges of coupling a cyclical spatial heterodyne spectrometer (SHS) with the Cassegrain telescope at the Lick Observatory on Mt. Hamilton, California. The SHS instrument (named Khayyam after the mathematician) is mounted to a fixed focal plane shared by the 0.6-m Cassegrain Coude Auxiliary Telescope (CAT) and has the field-of-view of similar to 4 arc min, on the sky, spectral resolving power (R) of 48,000 and a tunable wavelength bandpass range over Delta lambda(B) similar to 150 angstrom. This instrument-telescope pairing is optimal for temporal observations of extended astronomical targets, e.g., cometary coma, when significant observing time is available since it provides highresolution spectra from small input apertures. Khayyam's approach contrasts with traditional high spectral resolution spectrometers that need to be coupled to large aperture telescopes to compensate for their low throughput. Based on our reference lamp results, we were able to formulate the undesirable impact of the spider pattern on the SHS data that prohibited us from acquiring spectra from our sky targets. However, more analysis is needed to investigate if we can create a framework to systematically eliminate the diffracted spider pattern shadow from the fringe pattern without compromising the integrity and quality of the data. (C) 2020 Society of PhotoOptical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)ISSN
2329-4124Version
Final published versionae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1117/1.jatis.6.1.015005