70 research outputs found
SOXS: a wide band spectrograph to follow up transients
SOXS (Son Of X-Shooter) will be a spectrograph for the ESO NTT telescope
capable to cover the optical and NIR bands, based on the heritage of the
X-Shooter at the ESO-VLT. SOXS will be built and run by an international
consortium, carrying out rapid and longer term Target of Opportunity requests
on a variety of astronomical objects. SOXS will observe all kind of transient
and variable sources from different surveys. These will be a mixture of fast
alerts (e.g. gamma-ray bursts, gravitational waves, neutrino events), mid-term
alerts (e.g. supernovae, X-ray transients), fixed time events (e.g. close-by
passage of minor bodies). While the focus is on transients and variables, still
there is a wide range of other astrophysical targets and science topics that
will benefit from SOXS. The design foresees a spectrograph with a
Resolution-Slit product ~ 4500, capable of simultaneously observing over the
entire band the complete spectral range from the U- to the H-band. The limiting
magnitude of R~20 (1 hr at S/N~10) is suited to study transients identified
from on-going imaging surveys. Light imaging capabilities in the optical band
(grizy) are also envisaged to allow for multi-band photometry of the faintest
transients. This paper outlines the status of the project, now in Final Design
Phase.Comment: 12 pages, 14 figures, to be published in SPIE Proceedings 1070
The VIS detector system of SOXS
SOXS will be a unique spectroscopic facility for the ESO NTT telescope able
to cover the optical and NIR bands thanks to two different arms: the UV-VIS
(350-850 nm), and the NIR (800-1800 nm). In this article, we describe the
design of the visible camera cryostat and the architecture of the acquisition
system. The UV-VIS detector system is based on a e2v CCD 44-82, a custom
detector head coupled with the ESO continuous ow cryostats (CFC) cooling system
and the NGC CCD controller developed by ESO. This paper outlines the status of
the system and describes the design of the different parts that made up the
UV-VIS arm and is accompanied by a series of contributions describing the SOXS
design solutions.Comment: 9 pages, 13 figures, to be published in SPIE Proceedings 1070
Son of X--Shooter: a multi--band instrument for a multi--band universe
Son Of X-Shooter (SOXS) will be a new instrument designed to be mounted at
the Nasmyth--A focus of the ESO 3.5 m New Technology Telescope in La Silla site
(Chile). SOXS is composed of two high-efficiency spectrographs with a
resolution slit product 4500, working in the visible (350 -- 850 nm) and NIR
(800 -- 2000 nm) range respectively, and a light imager in the visible (the
acquisition camera usable also for scientific purposes). The science case is
very broad, it ranges from moving minor bodies in the solar system, to bursting
young stellar objects, cataclysmic variables and X-ray binary transients in our
Galaxy, supernovae and tidal disruption events in the local Universe, up to
gamma-ray bursts in the very distant and young Universe, basically encompassing
all distance scales and astronomy branches. At the moment, the instrument
passed the Preliminary Design Review by ESO (July 2017) and the Final Design
(with FDR in July 2018).Comment: 23 pages, 10 Figures, accepted to be published in Frontier Research
in Astrophysics 2018 Conference proceedings in Proceeding of Science. arXiv
admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1807.0882
SOXS End-to-End simulator: development and applications for pipeline design
We present the development of the End-to-End simulator for the SOXS
instrument at the ESO-NTT 3.5-m telescope. SOXS will be a spectroscopic
facility, made by two arms high efficiency spectrographs, able to cover the
spectral range 350-2000 nm with resolving power R=4500. The E2E model allows to
simulate the propagation of photons starting from the scientific target of
interest up to the detectors. The outputs of the simulator are synthetic
frames, which will be mainly exploited for optimizing the pipeline development
and possibly assisting for proper alignment and integration phases in
laboratory and at the telescope. In this paper, we will detail the architecture
of the simulator and the computational model, which are strongly characterized
by modularity and flexibility. Synthetic spectral formats, related to different
seeing and observing conditions, and calibration frames to be ingested by the
pipeline are also presented
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