Spectroscopy is the most powerful tool of observational astronomy.
By breaking the light of celestial objects into its component colors and measuring the intensity of each color, we can determine many of the important physical characteristics of these objects. The ultraviolet light from these stars ionizes the gas and causes it to glow. By measuring the strengths of various emission lines in these spectra we can determine the temperature, density, and extinction of this object. Turn on the telescope, controller, and spectrograph CCD system. Create a folder to hold your data in the ph344data folder on Hooker.