The Hercules Échelle Spectrograph at Mt. John

The High Efficiency and Resolution Canterbury University Large Echelle Spectrograph (HERCULES) a fibre-fed echelle spectrograph that was designed and built at the University of Canterbury and has been in operation at Mt. John University Observatory since April 2001.HERCULES receives light from the f/13.5 Cassegrain focus of the 1 m McLellan telescope. Resolving powers of R = 41 000, 70 000 and 82 000 are available. An R2 200 × 400 mm echelle grating provides dispersion and cross-dispersion uses a large BK7 prism in double pass. The wavelength coverage is designed to be 380–880 nm in a single exposure. The maximum detective quantum efficiency of the fibre, spectrograph and detector system is about 18% in 2 arc second seeing. High wavelength stability (to better than 10 ms-1 in radial velocity) is achieved by installing the whole instrument in a large vacuum tank at 2–4 torr and by there being no moving parts. The tank is in a thermally isolated and insulated environment. The paper describes the design philosophy of HERCULES and its performance during the first year of operation.