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DAO Observations and Instrumentation. Jason Grunhut. Introduction to the Dominion astrophysical Observatory. Situated on the peak of Observatory Hill in Victoria on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. 19 th mag dark skies Two telescopes available 1.85 m Plaskett f/18 Cassegrain focus
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DAO Observations and Instrumentation Jason Grunhut
Introduction to theDominion astrophysical Observatory • Situated on the peak of Observatory Hill in Victoria on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. • 19th mag dark skies • Two telescopes available • 1.85 m Plaskett • f/18 Cassegrain focus • f/5 modified Newtonian focus • Primarily used for spectroscopy • fully automatic pointing and guiding • 1.22 m McKeller telescope • Primarily used with Coudé focus. • Used for both spectroscopy and photometry
The Polarimeter • designed and built by Dmitry Monin • made from commercially available products • cheap • installed immediately after spectrograph slit. • achromatic quarter-wave plate converts light into two orthogonal linear polarizations (vertical/horizontal). • Ferroelectric Liquid Crystal (FLC) acts as half-wave plate • voltage controlled • near instantaneous change (few ns). • Calcite beam-displacer use to form image on CCD.
The Polarimeter - Continued • Take many spectra in two orthogonal states to remove instrumental effects. • Best at several Hz level • Usually use about 50-60 shifts. • Record both orthogonal states simultaneously.
CCD Image • Cover 4750-5000 Å • 0.15 Å/pixel dispersion • Resolving power of ~10 000 • ~70 G accuracy for 6th magnitude star in about 20 minutes (emission line star) using Fourier cross-correlation
Reductions • Reduced and extracted using IRAF • Correct for bias and bad pixels • Each beam is extracted separately • Matching beams are then combined • Single wavelength calibration is then applied • Stokes V is simply calculated from the difference of the two spectra (no prior normalization) • Resulting Stokes V and I spectra are normalized.
Issues and Future • Spurious detections in null-field standard stars. • Procyon, Theta Cep, Sigma And • Likely due to poor guiding in Declination. • Possibly due to poor alignment of crystal. • Improved since first tests. • Regression routine not entirely suitable as lines are well resolved. • Use Fourier Cross-Correlation • Use LSD method