H-alpha Spectroscopy of Bright Stars
Abstract
A LHires III spectrograph with a SBIG ST-8XME CCD camera was mounted onto the Celestron C14 telescope at the Harry D. Powell Observatory at East Tennessee State University. We determined the characteristics of the spectrograph, including calibrating the wavelength coverage with grating position along with determining the practical aspects of its use. The spectrograph will primarily be used for H-alpha line monitoring of bright stars to investigate stellar atmospheres and winds. Student projects will be planned in coordination with existing research projects using the Southeastern Association for Research in Astronomy (SARA) observatories. We present here a few reduced spectra of some target stars to demonstrate the capabilities of the spectrograph and to show comparison with SARA Observatory spectra since the instruments have very similar resolutions. We also investigated several software programs for processing astronomical spectra with regard to their use by novice undergraduate students.
- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #233
- Pub Date:
- January 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AAS...23336505M