spectro-aras.com

Hello, Forrest Sims here, joining this forum from Gilbert, Arizona USA. Gilbert is a suburb of Phoenix and has pretty heavy light pollution and normally has many clear nights. Other than the past two years when we have had very unusual long periods of cloudy nights. Much like all the years when we lived in Seattle and rarely ever saw stars, but warmer! The low deserts of Arizona are good for observing all of the year except SUMMER when we get extreme heat and Monsoon type storms. So summers are for travel!

I am also a newcomer to astronomy and especially spectroscopy. We purchased our first telescope, a 10” Dobsonian just over 3 years ago. Since that time I have built a roll-off roof observatory in our garden. It currently houses a Celestron C11EdgeHD on an Astro-Physics AP1100GTO mount on a permanent pier. I use an Atik460ex color camera and recently acquired an Atik414ex monochrome camera for spectroscopy and photometry. The C11 is equipped with a Celestron F7 focal reducer (and alternately a Hyperstar unit for F2 imaging), a Pyxis rotator, off-axis guider, Starlight Xpress filter wheel and a LodestarX2 autoguider. For trips to desert and mountain dark skies we have a Celestron 8” on a Celestron CGEM mount.

I primarily use MaximDL, FocusMax and Astro-Physics APCC Pro software running under the supervision of Bob Denny’s excellent ACP program.

Regarding spectroscopy, I started with Rspec and an SA200 grating which I could use in a filter drawer and/or the filter wheel. Rspec has steadily improved but I was not satisfied with the resolution in many cases with the SA200 grating. After attending the Society for Astronomical Sciences Symposium in Ontario California in 2016, which had a significant spectroscopy component, I decided to get a higher resolution spectrograph. One of the hard decisions (not counting the expense) was to go higher resolution with something like the Shelyak LHIRESIII or the lower resolution LISA, but possibly with access to less bright objects and therefore more types of eventual targets to study. Other members of this forum (Special thanks to David Boyd and Al Stiewing) and SAS were generous in helping to answer my questions and I chose to purchase a new Shelyak LISA with the Calibration module. I just received the LISA at the beginning of 2017. Now I am learning the characteristics of the LISA and its operation in conjunction with learning how to use ISIS to process the spectra data.

I started my career early on climbing mountains and working as an Aerospace engineer and ended up climbing mountains and developing software solutions which funded more climbing and adventure. I always wanted to “do science” and spectroscopy seems made to order. Looking forward to the adventure and participating with like minded people.

Best Regards!

Forrest Sims
Gilbert, AZ USA

Hi Woody,

You're very welcome
Very interesting setup.
Of course, I suggest symbiotics, waiting for the next nova.
Soon, Steve Shore will propose new interesting targets (B[e])
For data reduction, Isis is strongly recommanded. You'll find help here

All the best,

François

A warm welcome from me too! I am the guy who developed the Star Analyser, mainly as an inexpensive way for people to try their hand at spectroscopy. It seems it did it's job in your case You have certainly found the right place here to advance your skills.

Cheers
Robin

Forrest,
Welcome on board!
I'm sure you will find the LISA a very capable instrument.
Any questions just let us know, we're here to help.
Ken

Merçi. Thank you.

I am beginning to make some progress with ISIS, having successfully calibrated a few “test” stars using the File Mode of Spectral Calibration. I have been through the process once in ISIS of creating an instrument response file and applying it to my calibrated results. Next I guess is to tackle the affects of atmospheric transmission using the “differential method” as described in Christian Buil’s “Methods of measuring the instrument response and atmospheric transmission”. I am trying to develop a acquisition workflow methodology and a processing methodology as I try to figure out how ISIS works. Getting Vspec to run under Windows 10 has been totally unsuccessful and searching and trying ideas discussed on this forum have not resolved the issue. I am using Rspec to actually view and present my results. Are there other alternatives to Vspec? But I think this is a topic to be discussed further on a different forum thread.

François, thanks again from the help getting signed on to this forum and for the target suggestions.

Robin, Yes the SA200 was very helpful and I think will still provide interesting data especially since it fits nicely in my Starlight Xpress filter wheel and I can easy switch between it and the Johnson Cousins V-Band filter in an automated acquisition process.

Ken, Your book “Astronomical Spectroscopy for Amateurs” is a steady reference for me and is beginning to become “dog eared”:) Thanks for writing it!

Hello Forrest,
Climbing and spectrometry, nice combo
Isis has a steep learning curve but is definitively the way to go to extract the most of the raw LISA spectra and do a bit of science. I assume that you already tried to run Vspec in Win 10 (or lower) compatibility mode, but you can check Bass (https://uk.groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/astrobodger/info) as an alternative, especially for the SA200.
Cheers,
Jean-Philippe

Forrest Sims wrote:Getting Vspec to run under Windows 10 has been totally unsuccessful and searching and trying ideas discussed on this forum have not resolved the issue. I am using Rspec to actually view and present my results. Are there other alternatives to Vspec?

But while you are here, have you seen this latest solution with Vspec and Win10?
http://www.spectro-aras.com/forum/viewt ... f=8&t=1660

I use ISIS for reducing the data but I agree, it is not ideal for working with already reduced spectra so I mainly use VSpec for that. For presentation I am now using Tim Lester's excellent little program "PlotSpectra"

http://www.spectro-aras.com/forum/viewt ... f=8&t=1596
http://www.spectro-aras.com/forum/viewt ... f=8&t=1604
http://www.spectro-aras.com/forum/viewt ... f=8&t=1633

Robin

Forrest Sims wrote:Merçi. Thank you.

I am beginning to make some progress with ISIS, having successfully calibrated a few “test” stars using the File Mode of Spectral Calibration. I have been through the process once in ISIS of creating an instrument response file and applying it to my calibrated results. Next I guess is to tackle the affects of atmospheric transmission using the “differential method” as described in Christian Buil’s “Methods of measuring the instrument response and atmospheric transmission”. I am trying to develop a acquisition workflow methodology and a processing methodology as I try to figure out how ISIS works. Getting Vspec to run under Windows 10 has been totally unsuccessful and searching and trying ideas discussed on this forum have not resolved the issue. I am using Rspec to actually view and present my results. Are there other alternatives to Vspec? But I think this is a topic to be discussed further on a different forum thread.

François, thanks again from the help getting signed on to this forum and for the target suggestions.

Robin, Yes the SA200 was very helpful and I think will still provide interesting data especially since it fits nicely in my Starlight Xpress filter wheel and I can easy switch between it and the Johnson Cousins V-Band filter in an automated acquisition process.

Ken, Your book “Astronomical Spectroscopy for Amateurs” is a steady reference for me and is beginning to become “dog eared”:) Thanks for writing it!

Forrest
I wrote a page explaining my method of processing with ISIS for my LISA. I do it as I'm sitting at the scope whilst I'm acquiring my next target. It becomes quite simple.
http://users.northnet.com.au/~bohlsen/L ... /Start.htm
Terry