A high-resolution echelle spectrograph for precision Doppler observations with small telescopes

The Macquarie University campus observatory has recently undergone a significant upgrade, with a new fully- automated 0.6 m telescope and on-site facilities including an instrumentation laboratory. Here we report on the design, assembly, and first on-sky tests of a new high-resolution echelle spectrograph for the observatory. This spectrograph will be a key resource at our campus observatory, providing high fidelity measurements that will enable future research, in particular Master and PhD theses that require stellar spectroscopy or radial velocity measurements. The instrument will also form a cornerstone of the laboratory components of the undergraduate astronomy degree, and together with the new 0.6 m telescope, a key tool for project-based learning at the campus observatory. The instrument has been developed with radial velocity precision as the driving metric, and with future work on the environmental stabilisation it is expected to reach a radial velocity precision of 3 m s−1, enabling the observation of a wide range of exoplanets.