Building a CCD Spectrograph for Educational or Amateur Astronomy

Abstract

We discuss the design of an inexpensive, high-throughput CCDspectrograph for a small telescope. By using optical fibers to carry thelight from the telescope focus to a tabletop spectrograph, one canminimize the weight carried by the telescope and simplify thespectrograph design. We recently employed this approach in theconstruction of IntroSpec, an instrument built for the 16 inch KnowlesTelescope on the Harvard College campus.