spectro-aras.com

I'm Tim Stone, a relative newcomer of about two years to spectroscopy.

I use an 80mm ED refractor and a C8 scope with a Star Analyzer 200 and also a Lowspec. For the Lowspec I have a 300l/mm and 1200l/mm grating. The 1200 I currently use for solar spectrum work. Perhaps someday I'll have the capability of using that for higher resolution spectra of bright stars. I've imaged spectra down to about magnitude 8 so far, ever working to go fainter.

I love spectroscopy and its challenges. It has opened my eyes to see the universe in a very different way. My background is in deep sky astrophotography, and I find the two activities compliment each other nicely in many ways. I'm happy to learn and hope to do a lot of that by reading posts on this forum. I try not to ask dumb questions, but there's a lot I don't know! Sometimes I don't know whether a question is dumb.

Hi Tim,

Welcome!

Where are you located? (timezone, country). It could be helpful in terms of notification of northern or southern events worth making an observation of.

There is plenty which can be done with the SA100. Eventually you may want to step up to a slit spectrograph (oops, reread your post and see you have a lowspec, good work!), although in my experience, it is certainly an extra order of effort and gear due to the pointing, focusing, guiding, backfocus requirements and extra weight loading the (not always strong enough) focuser. I'm still working on getting my setup troubleshooted.

Cheers,
Hamish