Building and Testing the Spectrograph for the New Robotic Telescope

There are two min aims in this project, to develop a novel spectrograph optimised for the most efficient classification of transient astronomical phenomena and to use the newly developed spectrograph to carry out a programme of astronomical observations that prove the efficiency of the design.

This spectrograph has a brief design concept that needs to be finalised then verified with analytical tools such as Zemax Optic Studio.

A bench prototype will be assembled in-house and tested with a beam simulator to confirm the optical performance of the instrument matches the design. Once the performance has been assessed and approved the prototype will be mounted on the LT to be evaluated. Despite design differences in the two telescopes, the LT provides a good substitute to the NRT for testing purposes.

On the LT the prototype will observe a test set of data taken of standard calibration sources and transient targets of opportunity. Once testing is complete the spectrograph is complete and is ready to be mounted onto the NRT.

Before the spectrograph will be used by observers a data reduction pipeline will be developed in python which will calibrate the data from the instrument and examine calibration parameters for systematic and random errors affecting data quality. The final step would be a comparison to asses the performance of NR-SPRAT compared to LT-SPRAT.