From Assembly to the Complete Integration and Verification of the SOXS Common Path

TL;DR

This paper details the assembly, integration, and verification process of the SOXS Common Path, a crucial subsystem of a spectrograph designed for transient and variable source observations, emphasizing modular testing and alignment.

Contribution

It presents the complete process of assembling and testing the SOXS Common Path, highlighting the modular approach and optical quality verification.

Findings

Successful internal alignment of the Common Path components.

High optical quality achieved in the final testing phase.

Efficient integration process suitable for large, distributed teams.

Abstract

The Son Of X-Shooter (SOXS) is a single object spectrograph offering simultaneous spectral coverage in UV-VIS (350-850 nm) and NIR (800-2000 nm) wavelength regimes with an average of R close to 4500 for a 1 slit. SOXS also has imaging capabilities in the visible wavelength regime. It is designed and optimized to observe all kinds of transients and variable sources. The final destination of SOXS is the Nasmyth platform of the ESO NTT at La Silla, Chile. The SOXS consortium has a relatively large geographic spread, and therefore the Assembly Integration and Verification (AIV) of this medium-class instrument follows a modular approach. Each of the five main sub-systems of SOXS, namely the Common Path, the Calibration Unit, the Acquisition Camera, the UV-VIS Spectrograph, and the NIR Spectrograph, are undergoing (or undergone) internal alignment and testing in the respective consortium institutes. INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova delivers the Common Path sub-system, the backbone of the entire instrument. We report the Common Path internal alignment starting from the assembly of the individual components to the final testing of the optical quality, and the efficiency of the complete sub-system.