Description
Transient astronomy is a growing field. As stable objects are well studied due to historical development of infrastructure and data collection techniques for long exposure, high resolution and stable targets, while the tools for short time scales are far less common and now in very high demand. With the introduction of the Vera Rubin observatory, combined with other wide survey tools, the opportunity to develop rapid spectrographic follow-up presents itself. Rapid spectrographic follow up has technical requirements atypical of standard astronomical spectroscopy. It must be mounted on a telescope that can change targets quickly, in two important ways: First, physically, meaning it must have motorised mounts that can turn quickly. Second: Strategically, meaning it must have availability to respond to time sensitive targets and not occupied with predetermined long exposure targets. The solution to both of these is to employ small scale telescopes with aperture sizes below 1.5m, and use very high efficiency (> 70$\%$) through-put, to capture target light equivalent to larger apertures. This means that spectral data can be captured at shorter time scales, capturing spectral evolution of fast changing targets. The trade-off for a spectrograph of this type is spectral resolution, as such high efficiency necessitates a single pass refractor spectrograph design. The project includes both the design, assembly and installation of the spectrograph, with emphasis on simplicity, cost reduction and streamlining to complete the project within the time limit of a masters of research.
| I am the presenting author | Yes |
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