Optical Grating Spectrometer
About
The objective of this project was to design and build a working grating spectrograph that operates in the visible light spectrum. The spectrograph is designed to measure the spectrum of emission-line light sources such as gas discharge lamps. This project was completed as the course project for ASTR 3560 - Astronomical Instrumentation. I worked in a team of four students, called F-EOS, to complete this project. We were the first team in the history of the class to be able to produce a spectrum from our instrument.
Design
A more detailed discussion of the design of this project can be found in the final paper under Resources. The basic gist of the optical design of this spectrometer is as follows: light enters through a thin slit and goes through a lens to collimate the light. The light then hits a grating, which causes light to bounce off of it at different angles depending on the wavelenght of light. This effectively splits the light into its wavelength components. Then, the light travels through a few more optics to bring it to focus and then through an exit slit, which limits the amount of light that then hits the photodiode detector. I was the Electrical Lead, in charge of the design of the electronics that made this project work.
Resources
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