Always ready: how the new SOXS instrument will capture fleeting events

A star swallowed by a black hole, an exploding supernova… There are events in the Universe that have a very short expiry date. Such transient events must be observed quickly, sometimes within just hours or minutes, before they change or simply end. SOXS, a spectrograph soon to start observing on ESO’s New Technology Telescope at La Silla Observatory, is on a mission to capture the most…