ZShooter#
Keck I optical-IR spectrograph and imager
ZShooter is a Keck I workhorse in the making: an always-online optical-IR spectrograph plus a fast tri-band imager, built for decisive single-object science when timing, throughput, and wavelength leverage all matter at once.
It is intended to carry out observations that will bottleneck single-object astronomy in the Rubin era: fast response, broad wavelength coverage, high throughput, and spectral resolution useful well past first-look classification.
This site, like ZShooter, is actively evolving. It is here to do three jobs: clearly convey the concept, give the team a living technical home that keeps science and design stories clearly accessible, and affords both the team and future users and maintainers the resources they need to understand how to work with ZShooter.
Why the instrument exists and what science cases are already shaping its design.
Science and facility requirements, with a summary of the instrument requirements.
The post-CoDR architecture: where the instrument is, where it’s headed, and what is still open.
Seeing enhancement, sensitivity models, and the instrument simulator.
Calibration, classical and ToO observing, operations, and data reduction.
Work-package abbreviations, scope, and related instrument documentation.
Formal docs, repos, boards, notebooks, shared tools, and the links everyone winds up needing.
Instrument papers, presentations, and internal briefings.
Who we are.
Design in a nutshell
Always-online at Keck I Right Nasmyth for rapid response
Two spectrometers (optical & nIR) / six channels (blue, green, red, yj, h, k)
2k × 4k qCCDs in B/G/R; 2k × 2k LmAPDs in YJ/H/K, one detector per channel
ZSpec + ZImager Deep, fast imaging or simultaneous imaging of surroundings
AO-enhanced-seeing ready, optimized for natural seeing
A Zero-latency Spectrograph with High-throughput Optical-nIR Observing for Transient Exploration & Response
…so much more than X we had to skip Y.
Many of these pages are naturally mixed-use: useful to the team, useful to future students, eventually useful to observers and WMKO operations.