First light in lab
Transmittance spectrum of a Fabry-Perot etalon illuminated in white light.
Once the spectrograph was aligned, and before installing the CCD camera in the focal plane, we have taken a wonderful colored echellogramme of the Fabry-Perot calibration source. A commercial Nikon camera was focused on the virtual focal plane of the spectrograph. The circular vignetting is produces by the camera lens which restricts the field to about half the diameter of the spectrograph's focal plane.
The lines correspond to individual echelle orders of the spectrograph. Each dot is a transmission peak of the Fabry-Perot etalon, which is illuminated by a white Laser-Driven Light Source (LDLS). The peak width is a measure for the excellent image quality of the spectrograph.
These images where taken on December 10th, 2011. In the meantime the spectrograph has been tested in lab with all the available calibration lamps and in all its observing modes. At present (January 2012) The instrument is being packed and later shipped to La Palma.
