arXiv subjects

Lorenzo Cabona

Publications and source records attributed to Lorenzo Cabona.

12 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

The SOXS Spectrograph Instrument Control Software

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 $\sim 4500$, 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.

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arXiv2025

Searching for Exoplanets Born Outside the Milky Way: VOYAGERS Survey Design

Observations over the past few decades have found that planets are common around nearby stars in our Galaxy, but little is known about planets that formed outside the Milky Way. We describe the design and early implementation of a survey to test whether planets also exist orbiting the remnant stars of ancient dwarf galaxies that merged with the Milky Way, and if so, how they differ from their Milky Way counterparts. VOYAGERS (Views Of Yore - Ancient Gaia-enceladus Exoplanet Revealing Survey) is a radial velocity (RV) search using precision spectrographs to discover exoplanets orbiting very low metallicity ($-2.8 < [\mathrm{Fe/H}] \leq -0.8$) stars born in the dwarf galaxy Enceladus, which merged with the Milky Way galaxy about 10 Gyr ago. A sample of 22 candidates have been screened from a catalog of Gaia-Enceladus-Sausage (GES) members using a combination of stellar properties and reconnaissance observations from the TRES spectrograph. Precision RV measurements have been initiated using the NEID, HARPS-N, and CARMENES spectrographs. We plan to focus most upcoming observations on 10 main sequence targets. Data collection is well underway, with 778 observations on 22 candidates (385 of which are 10 focus targets), but far from complete. This survey is designed to be sensitive to sub-Neptune mass planets with periods up to hundreds of days. We note that the RV analysis gives mass multiplied by $\sin (inclination)$ or the minimum mass for exoplanets. The expected survey yield is three planets, assuming that occurrence rates are similar to those in the Milky Way and taking into account the degeneracy with inclination in our yield models. Our survey is designed to detect at least one exoplanet if occurrence rates are similar to known Milky Way exoplanets or, if no exoplanets are discovered, to rule out a Milky Way-like planet population in GES with 95% confidence level.

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arXiv2025

Final design of Cerberus, a three-headed instrument for the OARPAF telescope

Cerberus will be a new scientific instrument for the alt-az, 1m-class OARPAF telescope in Northern Italy. Currently, the telescope operates with a CCD camera used for imaging and photometry. One of the objectives of the project is to improve this observing mode with a tip-tilt lens for image stabilization up to 10Hz. Moreover, a long-slit spectroscopy at R 5900 and an optical fiber échelle spectroscopy at R 9300 observing modes will be included. These addtional two "heads" of Cerberus will be exclusively selected by moving flat 45 degree mirrors by means of a linear stage placed in a new custom interface flange. The flange will replace the existing one, recovering the included field flattener lens, to ensure optical correction of the imaging channel. We present the already procured COTS hardware, the opto-mechanical design of the interface flange, the results of the Zemax ray tracing and the design of the web-based instrument control software.

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arXiv2025

Toward the remotization and robotization of the OARPAF telescope

OARPAF (Osservatorio Astronomico Regionale Parco Antola Comune di Fascia, Italy) hosts an 80cm Astelco telescope with a Gambato Dome, SBIG-STX camera, Davis weather station, and SBIG AllSky camera. We present a layer-structured python3 framework to control these devices. Layer 1 provides straightforward getter/setter interface for "atomic" operations on devices. Layer 2 wraps the above mentioned atomic operations into "ESO-style" Templates, to perform sequences of common pointing, observation, and calibration operations called "Observation Blocks" (OBs) that are run by a sequencer. Layer 3 is a REST API based on HTTP verbs to expose methods that control Layer 1 devices and Layer 2. We also present a web interface built on top of this layer. The work is part of the frame for remoting and robotizing the observatory.

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arXiv2025

Easy remote observations using web interfaces: controlling an Italian telescope from Japan, and more

Remote observations are often limited by user interfaces, which seem frozen to another computer era: low performances, outdated programming languages, command-line scripting, high version-dependent software. Instead, web-based tools are standard: using nothing more than a browser, astronomers can interact with a generic observatory in a native cross-platform, remote-born way. We used this approach while advancing in the remotization of the 1m-class OARPAF telescope, located in Northern Italy. The web-based control software provides easy and integrated management of its components. This solution can be exported not only to similar hardware/software facilities, but also to large instruments such as SHARK-NIR at LBT; not only for single operations, but also for procedure scripting. In this contribution we describe our best practices and present two recent, orthogonal use cases: an in-place professional use for exoplanetary transit follow-ups, and the first remote control of the telescope from a Japanese high school, allowing students to independently observe, in their daytime, globular clusters

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arXiv2024

The SOXS Instrument Control Software approaching the PAE

The Instrument Control Software of SOXS (Son Of X-Shooter), the forthcoming spectrograph for the ESO New Technology Telescope at the La Silla Observatory, has reached a mature state of development and is approaching the crucial Preliminary Acceptance in Europe phase. Now that all the subsystems have been integrated in the laboratories of the Padova Astronomical Observatory, the team operates for testing purposes with the whole instrument at both engineering and scientific level. These activities will make use of a set of software peculiarities that will be discussed in this contribution. In particular, we focus on the synoptic panel, the co-rotator system special device, on the Active Flexure Compensation system which controls two separate piezo tip-tilt devices.

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arXiv2024

What is your favorite transient event? SOXS is almost ready to observe!

The Son Of X-Shooter (SOXS) will be the specialized facility to observe any transient event with a flexible scheduler at the ESO New Technology Telescope (NTT) at La Silla, Chile. 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~4500 for a 1arcsec slit. SOXS also has imaging capabilities in the visible wavelength regime. Currently, SOXS is being integrated at the INAF-Astronomical Observatory of Padova. Subsystem- and system-level tests and verification are ongoing to ensure and confirm that every requirement and performance are met. In this paper, we report on the integration and verification of SOXS as the team and the instrument prepare for the Preliminary Acceptance Europe (PAE).

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arXiv2024

ANDES, the high-resolution spectrograph for the ELT: RIZ Spectrograph preliminary design

We present here the preliminary design of the RIZ module, one of the visible spectrographs of the ANDES instrument 1. It is a fiber-fed high-resolution, high-stability spectrograph. Its design follows the guidelines of successful predecessors such as HARPS and ESPRESSO. In this paper we present the status of the spectrograph at the preliminary design stage. The spectrograph will be a warm, vacuum-operated, thermally controlled and fiber-fed echelle spectrograph. Following the phase A design, the huge etendue of the telescope will be reformed in the instrument with a long slit made of smaller fibers. We discuss the system design of the spectrographs system.

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arXiv2021

Commissioning and improvements of the instrumentation and launch of the scientific exploitation of OARPAF, the Regional Astronomical Observatory of the Antola Park

The \oarpaf telescope is an $80\rm cm$-diameter optical telescope installed in the Antola Mount Regional Reserve, in Northern Italy. This work presents the results of the characterization of the site, as well as developments and interventions that have been implemented, with the goal of exploiting the facility for scientific and educational purposes. During the characterization of the site, an average background brightness of $22.40 \, m_{AB}$ ($B$ filter) -- $21.14 \, m_{AB}$ ($I$) per arcsecond squared, and a $1.5$--$3.0"$ seeing, have been measured. An estimate of the magnitude zero points for photometry is also reported. The material under commissioning includes 3 CCD detectors for which we provide the linearity range, gain, and dark current; a 31 orders échelle Northern Italy. This work presents the results of the characterization of the site, as well as developments andspectrograph with $R\sim 8500$--$15000$, and a dispersion of $n = 1.39\times 10^{-6}\rm px^{-1}λ+ 1.45\times 10^{-4}\rm nm/px$, where $λ$ is expressed in $\rm nm$. The scientific and outreach potential of the facility is proven in different science cases, such as exoplanetary transits and active galactic nuclei variability. The determination of time delays of gravitationally lensed quasars, the microlensing phenomenon and the tracking and the study of asteroids are also discussed as prospective science cases.

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arXiv2021

Scheduling strategies for the ESPRESSO follow-up of TESS targets

Radial-velocity follow-up of stars harbouring transiting planets detected by TESS is expected to require very large amounts of expensive telescope time in the next few years. Therefore, scheduling strategies should be implemented to maximize the amount of information gathered about the target planetary systems. We consider myopic and non-myopic versions of a novel uniform-in-phase scheduler, as well as a random scheduler, and compare these scheduling strategies with respect to the bias, accuracy and precision achieved in recovering the mass and orbital parameters of transiting and non-transiting planets. This comparison is carried out based on realistic simulations of radial-velocity follow-up with ESPRESSO of a sample of 50 TESS target stars, with simulated planetary systems containing at least one transiting planet with a radius below $4R_{\oplus}$. Radial-velocity datasets were generated under reasonable assumptions about their noise component, including that resulting from stellar activity, and analysed using a fully Bayesian methodology. We find the random scheduler leads to a more biased, less accurate, and less precise, estimation of the mass of the transiting exoplanets. No significant differences are found between the results of the myopic and non-myopic implementations of the uniform-in-phase scheduler. With only about 22 radial velocity measurements per dataset, our novel uniform-in-phase scheduler enables an unbiased (at the level of 1\%) measurement of the masses of the transiting planets, while keeping the average relative accuracy and precision around 16\% and 23\% respectively. The number of non-transiting planets detected is similar for all the scheduling strategies considered, as well as the bias, accuracy and precision with which their masses and orbital parameters are recovered.

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arXiv2020

Cerberus: A three-headed instrument for the OARPAF telescope

We present the preliminary design of Cerberus, a new scientific instrument for the alt-az, 80cm OARPAF telescope in the Ligurian mountains above Genoa, Italy. Cerberus will provide three focal stations at the Nasmyth focus, allowing: imaging and photometry with standard Johnson-Cousins UBVRI+Ha+Free filters, an on-axis guiding camera, and a tip-tilt lens for image stabilization up to 10Hz; long slit spectroscopy at R 5900 thanks to a LHIRES III spectrograph provided with a 1200l/mm grism; échelle spectroscopy at R 9300 using a FLECHAS spectrograph with optical fiber.

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arXiv2017

Multi-filter transit observations of HAT-P-3b and TrES-3b with multiple Northern Hemisphere telescopes

We present a photometric follow-up of transiting exoplanets HAT-P-3b and TrES-3b, observed by using several optical and near-infrared filters, with four small-class telescopes (D = 36--152cm) in the Northern Hemisphere. Two of the facilities present their first scientific results. New 10 HAT-P-3b light curves and new 26 TrES-3b light curves are reduced and combined by filter in order to improve the quality of the photometry. Combined light curves fitting is carried out independently by using two different analysis packages, allowing the corroboration of the orbital and physical parameters in the literature. Results find no differences in the relative radius with the observing filter. In particular, we report for HAT-P-3b a first estimation of the planet-to-star radius Rp/R* = 0.1112+0.0025-0.0026 in the B band which is coherent with values found in the VRIz'JH filters. Concerning TrES-3b, we derive a value for the orbital period of P = 1.3061862+-0.0000001 days which shows no linear variations over nine years of photometric observations.

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