MLO CLASSI Spectrograph

This site is the documentation home for the MLO CLASSI (Claud Low-resolution Array-fed Small Scale Integral field) spectrograph. It describes the instrument as an integrated observing system: its optical and detector hardware, observing and calibration workflows, data products, control system, exposure-time tools, simulator, and reduction pipeline.

The Instrument user manual is the primary manual for observers and operators. Hardware and software pages provide deeper reference material, but repository boundaries do not define the observing workflow.

The normal path through the instrument is:

1. Plan

Target and observing requirements → exposure-time calculator → exposure time and S/N target

2. Acquire

Source → Telescope → fiber input → collimator, filter, and grating → camera lens and detector → raw FITS frames

3. Reduce

Raw FITS frames → trace extraction → wavelength calibration → flux calibration → calibrated spectra

Reference throughput curves, detector-response data, atmospheric-extinction data, and template spectra are shared across packages through the classi-shared-data distribution where practical.

Note

The majority of the content on this site was machine-generated using GPT-5.6 based on the contents of the various software repositories.

Start here

• Instrument user manual – instrument manual from system overview through data reduction.

• Instrument overview – what CLASSI is and how its subsystems fit together.

• Instrument hardware – optics, detector, mechanisms, and controllers.

• Getting started – choose the documentation path for your role and install software if needed.

• Packages and services – package-by-package software reference.

• Conventions – units, coordinate, detector, and spectrum conventions.

• Development and documentation maintenance – how the repositories fit together and how to update these docs.