SpectraBot is a new 50-inch automated telescope located 16 miles north of campus at the Morgan-Monroe Station of the Goethe Link Observatories.  It will be devoted to automated long-term monitoring (both CCD imaging and spectroscopy) of time-variable sources.  The telescope is now (2005) undergoing commissioning.

• Latitude: +39 18 49 
• Longitude: -86 26.4
• Elevation: 245 m
• Aperture: 1.25 m
• Optical Configuration: f/8 Ritchey-Chretien
• Optics: Gas-fusion lightweight blanks by Hextek, Inc. Optical figuring by Univ. of Arizona Optical Science Center (primary) and Brashear LP (secondary).
• Plate Scale: 20"/mm
• Detector: Liquid nitrogen cooled, thinned CCD, 1024x1024 pixels, each pixel 24 microns.
• Filters: U,B,V,R,I
• Spectrograph: Fiber-fed crossed-dispersed echelle with R = 5000.

The SpectraBot approach of combined unattended photometry and spectroscopy in the same telescope and instrument is described in:

"An Integrated Program for Automated CCD Photometry and Spectroscopy", Honeycutt, K. 1994, in Optical Astronomy from the Earth and Moon, ASP Conf Series Vol 55, ed. D.M. Pyper & J. Angione (San Francisco, ASP), 103

The technique that will be used for SpectraBot unattended spectroscopy is described in:

"Unattended H-alpha Spectroscopy of P Cygni and Beta Lyrae", Honeycutt, R.K., Turner, G.W., Vesper, D.N., Robertson, J.W. & White, J.C. 1993, PASP, 105, 426

The echelle spectrograph design is described in:

"Medium-resolution Echelle Spectrograph Design", Honeycutt, R.K.,Robertson, J.W., & Pier, J.R. 1998, in Proc. SPIE Conf. on Optical Astronomical Instrumentation, Vol. 3355, p. 696