Walking with SOXS towards the transient sky

TL;DR

SOXS is a versatile spectrograph designed to provide rapid follow-up observations of transient astronomical events, complementing imaging surveys and upcoming telescopes like the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.

Contribution

This paper presents the development and current status of SOXS, a new spectrograph instrument tailored for transient sky observations at the La Silla Observatory.

Findings

SOXS has been integrated and tested in Italy.

Preparatory activities in Chile have been completed.

The instrument is ready for deployment to support transient classification.

Abstract

SOXS (Son Of X-Shooter) is the new ESO instrument that is going to be installed on the 3.58-m New Technology Telescope at the La Silla Observatory. SOXS is a single object spectrograph offering a wide simultaneous spectral coverage from U- to H-band. Although such an instrument may have potentially a large variety of applications, the consortium designed it with a clear science case: it is going to provide the spectroscopic counterparts to the ongoing and upcoming imaging surveys, becoming one of the main follow-up instruments in the Southern hemisphere for the classification and characterization of transients. The NTT+SOXS system is specialized to observe all transients and variable sources discovered by imaging surveys with a flexible schedule maintained by the consortium, based on a remote scheduler which will interface with the observatory software infrastructure. SOXS is realized timely to be highly synergic with transients discovery machines like the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. The instrument has been integrated and tested in Italy, collecting and assembling subsystems coming from all partners spread over six countries in three continents. The first preparatory activities in Chile have been completed at the telescope. This article gives an updated status of the project before the shipping of the instrument to Chile.