LLAMAS
The Large Lenslet Array Magellan Spectrograph (LLAMAS) is a new instrument for the 6.5-meter Magellan Baade telescope. LLAMAS is an Integral Field Unit (IFU) spectrograph which records a 3D data cube with every image, capturing both image data and optical spectra for thousands of pixels across a 37”x37” solid angle on the sky.
To study faint sources, such as the gas around galaxies, we must minimize any unwanted light in the instrument. I led the stray-light analysis using non-sequential ray tracing in the FRED Optical Engineering Software. Through this analysis we were able to characterize the stray light in the system and design baffles to block the largest sources of stray light such that the instrument met its science requirements. You can read more about the stray-light analysis and reduction in Frostig et al. 2020.
