The RSpec Spectra Team

Welcome to the RSpec Spectra Team (“RST”).  You’re now a member!

Our goal is to share the joy of spectroscopy with one another and to learn together.

Here’s a great late summer project. Capture the spectra of three stars in Perseus. The attached image was captured by Christian Buil using a Star Analyser 100. There’s a Red Supergiant, a Be star with an emission line from a rotating disc of gas around the star, and a fun Wolf Rayet star. Here’s Christian’s writeup: link.

Robin Leadbeater, inspired by Buil’s image, then captured the same spectra with his Star Analyser 100. His mono version is better exposed for processing although Christian’s color version is “prettier!”  Robin published his image and an informative commentary here: link.

As so many of us have found, once you have captured data yourself, it becomes so much more meaningful to you. You can use these three stars as a starting point to learn more about the different stages in the life of stars.

If you capture the spectra of any of these stars, post your results in this forum thread: link. We can all learn a lot from one another.