The SOXS Spectrograph Instrument Control Software
Abstract
SOXS (Son Of X-Shooter) is a new spectrograph for the European Southern Observatory (ESO), recently installed at the New Technology Telescope (NTT) at the La Silla Observatory, Chile. The main instrument goal consists in the characterization of transient sources, based on alerts. It covers from (partially) ultra-violet to visible and near-infrared bands, with a spectral resolution of R , using two separate, wavelength-optimized spectrographs. A scientific grade visible camera, primarily intended for target acquisition, also provides a "light imaging" mode. In this paper, we present the design of the SOXS Instrument Control Software, which is in charge of controlling all motors, calibration lamps and detectors, monitoring sensors and components' status, coordinating the execution of exposures, and implementing all observation, calibration and maintenance procedures. Given the extensive experience of the SOXS consortium in the development of instruments for the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT), we decided to base the design of the Control System on the same standards, both for hardware and software control. We illustrate the control network, the instrument functions and detectors to be controlled, the overall design of SOXS Instrument Software (INS) and its main components. Then, we provide details about the control software for the most SOXS-specific components, and peculiar features: the piezoelectric tip-tilt corrector used for active compensation of mechanical flexures of the instrument; the cryogenic piezoelectric slit exchanger for the NIR spectrograph; the co-rotator monitoring system; and the control of the Commercial-Off-the-Shelf (COTS)- based imaging camera.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2604.24214,
title = {The SOXS Spectrograph Instrument Control Software},
author = {Davide Ricci and Bernardo Salasnich and Andrea Baruffolo and Jani Achrén and Matteo Aliverti and José A. Araiza-Durán and Iair Arcavi and Laura Asquini and Federico Battaini and Sagi Ben-Ami and Alex Bichkovsky and Anna Brucalassi and Rachel Bruch and Lorenzo Cabona and Sergio Campana and Giulio Capasso and Enrico Cappellaro and Riccardo Claudi and Mirko Colapietro and Rosario Cosentino and Francesco D'Alessio and Paolo D'Avanzo and Sergio D'Orsi and Massimo Della Valle and Rosario Di Benedetto and Simone Di Filippo and Avishay Gal-Yam and Matteo Genoni and Marcos Hernandez Díaz and Ofir Hershko and Jari Kotilainen and Hanindyo Kuncarayakti and Marco Landoni and Gianluca Li Causi and Laurent Marty and Seppo Mattila and Matteo Munari and Luca Oggioni and Hector Pérez Ventura and Giorgio Pariani and Giuliano Pignata and Kalyan Kumar Radhakrishnan Santhakumari and Stephen Smartt and Michael Rappaport and Marco Riva and Adam Rubin and Salvatore Savarese and Pietro Schipani and Salvatore Scuderi and Maximilian Stritzinger and Fabrizio Vitali and David Young and Ricardo Zanmar Sanchez and Gerard Zins},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.24214},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
18 pages, 3 figures. Accepted for publication on JATIS