SpeX: A Medium‐Resolution 0.8–5.5 Micron Spectrograph and Imager for the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility

We present the design, construction, and performance of SpeX, a medium-resolution 0.8-5.5 mm cryogenic spectrograph and imager, now in operation at the 3.0 m NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) on Mauna Kea. The design uses prism cross-dispersers and gratings to provide resolving powers up to R ∼ 2000 simultaneously across 0.8-2.4, 1.9-4.2, or 2.4-5.5 mm, with a 15 long slit. A high-throughput low-resolution prism mode is also provided for faint-object and occultation spectroscopy. Single-order 60 long-slit R ∼ 200 modes with resolving powers up to are available for extended objects. The spectrograph employs an R ∼ 2000