Prism 3.8° for the Star Analyser

The Star Analyser has been designed to produce low-resolution spectra of sky objects as easily as possible, by placing a diffraction grating in the telescope’s converging beam. This simplicity results in sub-optimal optical quality, in particular by bringing coma into the spectrum.

The Star Analyser prism is calculated to reduce this coma as much as possible, and therefore provides better spectrum quality. The improvement is of the order of 20%, to achieve a resolving power of the order of R=130.

Do you need this prism? If you’re using the Star Analyser to discover the spectro as simply as possible, this prism isn’t necessary. If, on the other hand, you want to push the Star Analyser to its limits – for example, to characterize novae or supernovae – then this prism will be useful.