Hello from Ontario

[Tim Lester]

I have a small observatory in Arnprior ON Canada (just outside of Ottawa) which houses a 12.5 inch corrected Dall Kirkham Cassegrain that I fabricated myself in 2009, both the optics and the mount.
My career has been in the development and fabrication of high speed integrated circuits for the telecommunications industry. My undergraduate degree was in physics and astronomy but I changed direction after my masters degree. For my PhD I investigated a novel idea for a photon counting CCD detector and that ultimately led to job offers from semiconductor fabrication companies. Now that I am retired I have gone back to my first love.

I have been doing imaging up until now but this last fall after pouring over Christian Buil’s web site I decided to build a spectrograph as a winter project. My first instrument is designed for an R of 1200 and a spectral coverage of 400 to 750 nm. Bench tests are giving an R over 1200 when binned 2x2 (a bit under sampled) and nearly 1500 when binned 1x2.
I have only used it 4 nights on stellar objects so far. First light was March 8 on SN2014J. Much of this is new and the learning curve is still a bit steep.
I would like to thank Christian Buil. It was his web site that got me going on this.

Tim Lester
Mill Ridge Observatory
Arnprior ON Canada

[Ken Harrison]

Tim,
Welcome to the "final frontier -"
I agree, Christian and his dedication to spectroscopy has been an inspiration to all of us.
The "failure mode" of 90% of DIY spectroscopes seems to be the entrance slit/ guiding.
I have developed a multi-slit reflective plate which gives a choice of 10 slit gaps and very good guide reflection.
This is currently used in the new generation Spectra-L200 instrument.
PM/ email me for details.

[Francois Teyssier]

Dear Tim,
Welcome in spectroscopy world and in ARAS group.
I've been very impressed by the quality of your home-made spectroscop and your first results.
For his firt attempts, Tim produced noticelly a very good spectrum of nova cyg 2014
New page in data base : http://www.astrosurf.com/aras/Aras_Data ... g-2014.htm
and also very interesting result on T CrB : full optical range AND a resolution which allows to resolve the H alpha line showing the central absorption
http://www.astrosurf.com/aras/Aras_Data ... s/TCrB.htm
François