Merlin66's new book: Astronomical Spectroscopy for Amateurs

[sheeny]

Our very own Merlin66 has a new book coming out very soon:

"Astronomical Spectroscopy for Amateurs".

For details and orders see here:

http://www.springer.com/astronomy/book/978-1-4419-7238-5?changeHeader

Onya, Ken!

Al.

[Big Dave]

looks interesting, sounds like a challenge!

[CraigS]

Hi Al;

Thanks for that update.

I was conversing today with Carl & others in the Amateur Science Forum about what you Spectroscopers were up to and I'm amazed at some of the spectra you guys are coming up with.

I'm also amazed at how relatively inexpensive the startup costs are. The book would seem to be a good proposition, also.

Great to see the raw data being obtained by Amateurs, which can move everyone more into the pure Science aspects of Astronomy.

Cheers

[Merlin66]

Geee!
Thanks Al.

"Spectroscopy - The final Frontier" - Boldly going where few amateurs have gone before....

There's also a simplified introductory book, directed towards first time users of the Rainbow Optics and Star Analyser Gratings in preparation
"Grating Spectroscopes - How to use them"

The Spectra-L200 Kit, (an intermediate Littrow slit spectroscope),first batch, has sold out!
Time to consider a second batch?

Ken

[tomfield]

Since the discussion is on spectroscopy, I wanted to point members to a program I've recently released that makes it easy to capture spectra: http://www.rspec-astro.com (http://www.rspec-astro.com/).

When I got started in spectroscopy, I found that it required quite a few steps (with several different software programs) to go from a camera image to a profile graph that actually shows the spectrum. I wrote RSpec in response to the fact that I felt that the tools that were available were not well integrated and resulted in an unnecessarily complicated workflow.

While RSpec works with any imaging equipment, I see some of you have webcams, which can be used with the program to do real-time spectroscopy. It's quite exciting to see a spectrum real-time. For example, when you point your gear at Vega, you can immediately see the Hydrogen lines.

There are a lot of videos on the site that show the software in-action.

Tom

[theodog]

Well done on the book Ken. I will be ordering soon.:P

Keep us informed on the progress of the L200 kit 2nd Ed. I was too slow for the first.
I have become bogged down in the alignment/callibration of my project. Weather hasn't helped.:shrug:

[renormalised]

Great going, Ken!!!!:):)

I'll be ordering a copy, for sure:)

[renormalised]

Interesting piece of software, Tom....will be looking into it:)