Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy III
DOI: 10.1117/12.856709
Full text: Download
Small telescopes coupled to high resolution spectrometers are powerful tools for Doppler planet searches. They allow for high cadence observations and flexible scheduling; yet there are few such facilities. We present an innovative and inexpensive design for CHIRON, a high resolution (R~80.000) Echelle spectrometer for the 1.5m telescope at CTIO. Performance and throughput are very good, over the whole spectral range from 410 to 870nm, with a peak efficiency of 15% in the iodine absorption region. The spectrograph will be fibre-fed, and use an iodine cell for wavelength calibration. An image slicer permits a moderate beam size. We use commercially available, high performance optical components, which is key for quick and efficient implementation. We discuss the optical design, opto-mechanical tolerances and resulting image quality.