This is the first picture of my USB Spectroscope.

It looks ugly I know… but it works 😀

The Spectrometer is made our of a 1000ln/mm diffraction grating with a Microsoft Lifecam HD-5000. The slit is made with a couple of razor blades. Everything is placed inside a 2″ short tube and the camera into a 2″ eyepiece holder. The nice thing about the webcam is that it has lens focus so I can do the focusing via software and not moving the webcam itself.

Now I’m calibrating the spectroscope with a couple of coloured lasers: a red one (632.8nm) and a green one (532,0nm). The calibration with laser is much more precise than the one I made by using a fluorescent lamp. I tested it with a couple of narrow band filters (HA and Baader Continuum) and results are exactly as expected. The resolution of the spectroscope is 7.6A/pixel with the actual setup. I don’t think I can have better resolution with that webcam.

Later I’ll publish a few spectrum taken with it.

The RSpec software is worth every single cent. It makes things a lot easier than with other software and most of them in real time (if your computer is powerful enough).