A new type of spectrometer

[wimvb]

This turned up in my news feed

https://scitechdaily.com/advanced-lab-on-a-chip-scientists-have-created-a-powerful-ultra-tiny-spectrometer/

Products will take several years to develope, but this looks like it could radically change amateur spectrometry. 

“If you’re into astronomy, you might be interested in measuring the spectrum of light that you collect with your telescope and having that information identify a star or planet,” he said.

("He" is professor Ethan Minot of Oregon State University)

[robin_astro]

20 hours ago, wimvb said:

 

“If you’re into astronomy, you might be interested in measuring the spectrum of light that you collect with your telescope and having that information identify a star or planet,” he said.

 

Difficult to say as the paper is behind a paywall

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add8544

but from the abstract it seems to be an electrically tunable filter (like a monochromator) rather than a true spectrometer. Good for spectral imaging, though currently at low resolution of 3nm (R~150 similar to a Star Analyser for example). The downside is you would have to scan across the wavelengths to collect the full spectrum ie over 100 separate exposures so pretty inefficient for single point astro targets. It would be cool to be able chose the wavelength you wanted for narrow band imaging though instead of having a wheel full of filters.

Cheers

Robin

[robin_astro]

2 minutes ago, robin_astro said:

The downside is you would have to scan across the wavelengths to collect the full spectrum ie over 100 separate exposures so pretty inefficient for single point astro targets.

It might be useful for survey spectroscopy of star fields though, picking out a set of specific wavelengths of interest without the issue of overlapping spectra you get with slitless spectroscopy.

Like this example wide field experimental Star Analyser objective grating setup I have been testing 😱  (anyone spot the Wolf Rayet star ?)

Cheers

Robin

 

[wimvb]

On 04/12/2022 at 15:25, robin_astro said:

Difficult to say as the paper is behind a paywall

Only certain versions

https://research.aalto.fi/files/91023117/Hoon_Miniature_science.pdf