Shelyak Alpy Guiding Module

The spectroscope Alpy 600 can be used on table or in laboratory: in this case, just put the light source to be observed in front of the slit. But when you want to observe the spectrum of a star, a problem arises: how to know if you point at the good star, and make sure that the star is perfectly positioned in the slit ?

The guiding module answers this question: it allows to visualize the field of view of the telescope, as well as the slit (observed by the front of the spectroscope), with a guiding camera. It is an essential help to point at, as well as to guide and autoguide the telescope as soon as your observation lasts more a few seconds.

The principle of the guiding module is simple: we replace the standard slit of the Alpy 600 by a mirroring and slightly tilted slit, which sends back the image of the telescope towards the guiding camera (or an eyepiece, with the optional eyepiece holder). See the sketch below (extracted from the book ” Succesfully Starting in Astronomical Spectroscopy – A Practical Guide”).