The Wide Field Spectral Imager (WISPI) was designed and constructed by Dr. John Kielkopf in 1993-94 with a grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to provide a new capability for measuring the spectrum of the sky across fields of view much larger than the full moon. The instrument uses a high speed optical system to form an image on the entrance slit of a matching stigmatic spectrometer, which then disperses a spectrum of a strip of the sky onto a sensitive two-dimensional detector. A separate imaging system is used for pointing and tracking, and both instruments are on a computer controlled mounting that permits automated data acquisition.
WISPI will be renovated this summer to map faint extended
H-alpha emission in nebulae. It will be re-installed in the Roll Roof Building
for use in the fall of 2007, with the new capability to operate unattended.
WISPI in its original form in the optical laboratory.
Click here for a look at WISPI when it was in the main dome at Moore Observatory for observations of Hale-Bopp.
WISPI with its covers removed to show the internal optical system. Light from the sky enters the large 400mm lens at top center, is imaged on the slit, collimated by the smaller 180 mm lens, and diffracted by the grating at the bottom toward the 200mm lens and CCD camera on the right. A Questar tracking telescope, since removed, is on the left.
The instrument as shown here was used at our site since from 1995 to 2005. With the modifications now being made, it will be possible to use it at low latitude sites such as Mt. Kent in the southern hemisphere, and to run it remotely without an operator on-site.
