Hello from Ontario
Posted: Sat Apr 05, 2014 4:42 pm
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
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