An Automated Fiber High Resolution Spectrograph for a Small Telescope

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Proposal: 0519429 Principal Investigator: Catherine Pilachowski Title: An Automated Fiber High Resolution Spectrograph for a Small Telescope ABSTRACT: An automated fiber high resolution echelle spectrograph (the FHiREbot spectrograph) will be built by Indiana University (IU) for use in unattended mode on IU's SpectraBot 1.3-m telescope. The spectrograph incorporates a 76 degree echelle grating with a white pupil design to achieve a spectral resolving power of R=60,000, sufficient to resolve thermal line profiles in solar-type stars, with simultaneous and complete spectral coverage from 390-680 nm, covering the Ca II K and H lines through the Li I feature at 670 nm. The format of the spectrograph will be fixed so that the spectra will be standardized and uniform. All spectra obtained will ultimately be processed through pipeline reductions and made available to the community in a spectral library. Intellectual Merit: The primary reason to build this spectrograph is the need to conduct large surveys of relatively bright stars, both to obtain statistically significant or complete samples of stellar types and to enable efficient monitoring programs for stellar variability and asteroseismology. The specific scientific goal proposed is a complete survey of the 10,000 Hipparcos stars which are visible from the northern hemisphere and which have high-quality (better than 10%) parallax and proper motion data. These data will be used for studies of stellar properties and evolution, including detailed studies of stellar abundances throughout the HR diagram, studies of the evolution of angular momentum in stars, and studies of the changes of the Li abundance in stars with stellar evolution. Broader Impacts: The FHiREbot spectrograph will significantly impact the broader community on two fronts: education and research infrastructure. Graduate students and undergraduate astronomy majors at IU will participate in the design and commissioning of the spectrograph; experience with instrumentation is an important component in undergraduate education. Undergraduates will use data from the spectrograph for Senior Honors theses, and graduate students will use FHiREbot for Ph.D. thesis research. More broadly, the archive of standardized spectra will be a resource for small undergraduate research projects carried out as part of our core undergraduate courses. Access to the database will not be restricted to IU, and curricular units on basic spectrum analysis developed for IU courses will be available to educators elsewhere for classroom use. The impact on research infrastructure in astronomy is potentially large. US astronomers currently have limited access to high dispersion spectrographs, except on the largest telescopes where only limited time is available. Broad spectroscopic surveys are best carried out on moderate aperture telescopes (small telescopes do not collect enough light, and big telescopes cannot access large samples efficiently). The availability of FHiREbot on IU's automated SpectraBot telescope will provide an important piece of instrumentation infrastructure for US astronomers. The FHiREbot database of spectra will also be available to the community for use in scientific investigations.