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arXiv · 1310.5235

HERMES at Mercator, competitive high-resolution spectroscopy with a small telescope

Gert Raskin·Hans Van Winckel
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Abstract

HERMES, a fibre-fed high-resolution (R=85000) echelle spectrograph with good stability and excellent throughput, is the work-horse instrument of the 1.2-m Mercator telescope on La Palma. HERMES targets building up time series of high-quality data of variable stellar phenomena, mainly for asteroseismology and binary-evolution research. In this paper we present the HERMES project and discuss the instrument design, performance, and a future upgrade. We also present some results of the first four years of HERMES observations. We illustrate the value of small telescopes, equipped with efficient instrumentation, for high-resolution spectroscopy.

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Gert Raskin, Hans Van Winckel. 2013-10-19. HERMES at Mercator, competitive high-resolution spectroscopy with a small telescope. https://doi.org/10.1002/asna.201312009

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