Instruments

For an indication of exposure times to use with the science imagers, use our exposure time calculator.

Data from the science imagers are automatically processed through the BANZAI pipeline.

Spectrographs

FLOYDS (2-meter)

FLOYDS is a cross-dispersed, low resolution spectrograph, installed at both 2-m telescopes. The wavelength coverage is extremely broad -- with 540-1000nm in first order and 320-570nm in second order, recorded in a single exposure. Resolution varies from R=400 to R=700, and is roughly 0.35 nm/pixel in 1st order and 0.17 nm/pixel in second order. Each FLOYDS has a set of four (30" long) slits with widths of 1.2", 1.6", 2.0", and 6.0".  These project to 3.5, 4.4, 4.9, and 14.4 pixels respectively on the detector.  Acquisition and guiding is done robotically via a separate camera which images the slit and produces a 6.4’x4.3’ field of view.

NRES (1-meter)

LCO's Network of Robotic Echelle Spectrographs (NRES) consists of four identical high-resolution (R~53,000), precise (≤ 3 m/s design goal), optical (380-860 nm) echelle spectrographs, each fiber-fed (~2.9" per fiber width) by one of two 1 meter telescopes and a ThAr calibration source. The anticipated long-term accuracy for NRES is better than 3 m/s in less than an hour for stars brighter than V = 11. Like all instruments at LCO, scheduling, observing, and data reduction are autonomous, and all data will be publicly available after a proprietary period. NRES nodes are installed at our sites in in Chile, Texas, Israel, and South Africa and are currently available for science observations.

Filters

The Sinistro imagers on LCO's 1m telescopes use 75mm square filters in 18 or 21 capacity filterwheels. Standard loadout is a complete Johnson-Cousins/Bessell set (UBVRI) and a SDSS/PanSTARRS set (u’g’r’i’z_sYw).

The QHY600 imagers on LCO's 0.4m telescopes use 50mm diameter round filters. The available filters are Johnson-Cousins/Bessell UV, and the SDSS/PanSTARRS set (u'g'r'i'z_sw) with the exception of Pan-STARRS Y.