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Narrow-Band Imaging System for the Multi-application Solar Telescope at Udaipur Solar Observatory: Characterization of Lithium Niobate Etalons

Multi-application Solar Telescope is a 50 cm off-axis Gregorian telescope that has been installed at the lake site of Udaipur Solar Observatory. For quasi-simultaneous photospheric and chromospheric observations, a narrow-band imager has been developed as one of the back-end instruments for this telescope. Narrow-band imaging is achieved using two lithium niobate Fabry-Perot etalons working in tandem as a filter. This filter can be tuned to different wavelengths by changing either voltage, tilt or temperature of the etalons. To characterize the etalons, a Littrow spectrograph was set up, in conjunction with a 15 cm Carl Zeiss Coudé solar telescope. The etalons were calibrated for the solar spectral lines FeI 6173 Å, and CaII 8542 Å. In this work, we discuss the characterization of the Fabry-Perot etalons, specifically the temperature and voltage tuning of the system for the spectral lines proposed for observations. We present the details of the calibration set-up and various tuning parameters. We also present solar images obtained using the system parameters. We also present solar images obtained using the system.