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D. Lester, G. J. Hill (McDonald Obs., U. Texas), G. Doppmann, C. Froning, P. M. Harvey (U. Texas)
The CoolSpec near infrared grating spectometer has been fully commissioned for use on the 2.7m Harlan Smith telescope of the McDonald Observatory. CoolSpec uses a novel design that separates a cool spectrograph from a cold imager, allowing that latter array to be used routinely and separately for direct imaging. This is accomplished by making the input and output f/ratio of the spectrograph identical. The slit drive and grating drives are modular and easily removable, allowing simple maintenance. The slit drive provides four separate slit widths, and an open position for through-the-spectrograph imaging. The grating drive is an unusual design that centers any of four grating substrates on the tilt axis of the grating table. All stepper motors are cold, and there are no mechanical feedthroughs into the dewar. The spectrograph temperature is matched to the requirements of a 1-2.5 micron spectrometer and the noise characteristics of a NICMOS3 256x256 detector array. The spectrograph provides a resolving power of up to up to 4000 in a 1"x90" slit, which maps onto the array as 3x256 pixels. The instrument is being used for studies of molecular hydrogen in evolved stellar envelopes, Jovian aurorae emissions, as well as line profile and molecular absorption in compact binary systems.
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