The Solar-Stellar Spectrograph

Additional spectroscopic capability is available on the 1.1-meter Hall Telescope. The Solar-Stellar Spectrograph (SSS) is a fiber-coupled dual spectrograph presently used to monitor the short- and long-term behavior of the Sun and about 460 solar-like stars. It comprises an echelle spectrograph covering wavelengths from 5100 to 9000 A, with about 70% coverage, and a Littrow spectrograph covering 3860-4010 A (the Ca II H & K region). The CCDs are TEK 512x512s, and the resolution is 12,000 with about two pixels per resolution element. A dual fiber feed allows observation of both the stars and the Sun with the same instrument. A quartz lamp and a Thorium-Argon hollow cathode are available for obtaining calibration frames. On clear nights with average seeing, exposure lengths required for acceptable S/N at V=5.00, 6.00, and 7.00 are 8, 15, and 30 minutes, respectively. At magnitudes fainter than V=9.00, hour-long exposures are required and the data are noisy. The faintest target for which the SSS has obtained usable data was a T Tauri star with V=10.7.

 

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