Boombox: a low-resolution Magellan and MMT spectrograph coming to Stanford

Speaker: Danielle Frostig (CfA Harvard & Smithsonian) / Ashley Villar (Harvard) In Person and zoom 

Zoom info: https://stanford.zoom.us/j/98604058568

While imaging surveys have grown significantly in scale and depth, spectroscopic resources have struggled to keep pace. In full operations of the Rubin telescope's LSST, there will be ~1 million supernovae discovered per year with only a small fraction of them characterized spectroscopically. In this new regime, we need algorithms to select the most interesting targets and a new generation of spectroscopic instruments to expand our follow-up capacity.Boombox is a new low-resolution, high-throughput optical spectrograph for the MMT and Magellan telescopes. It is one of two instruments in the upcoming Via survey, of which Stanford is a key partner. Over 600 fibers are robotically positioned across a 1 deg^2 field of view and delivered to ViaSpec (500 fibers) and Boombox (36 fibers). ViaSpec covers 505-595 nm at a resolution of R~15,000, while Boombox covers 360-1010 nm at R~1000. Via will operate for five years, with 150 nights of observing annually, during which both instruments will run simultaneously. Boombox's deep coverage enables a broad range of science, including exotic transient characterization, studies of fast radio burst host galaxies, metal-poor stars, comets, and more.