The CoolSpec near infrared grating spectometer has been fully commissioned for use on the 2.7m Harlan Smith telescope of the McDonald Observatory. CoolSpec uses a novel design that separates a cool spectrograph from a cold imager, allowing that latter array to be used routinely and separately for direct imaging. The slit drive and grating drives are modular and easily removable, allowing simple maintenance. The grating drive is an unusual design that centers any of four grating substrates on the tilt axis of the grating table.
All stepper motors are cold, and there are no mechanical feedthroughs into the dewar.
The instrument is being used for studies of molecular hydrogen in evolved stellar envelopes, Jovian aurorae emissions, as well as line profile and molecular absorption in compact binary systems. This link was provided by the author.