Designing optimal masks for a multi-object spectrometer

This paper concerns a new optimization problem arising in the management of multi-object spectrometer with configurable slit unit. The field view spectrograph is divided into contiguous and parallel spatial bands, each one associated two opposite sliding metal bars that can be positioned to observe astronomical object. Thus several objects analyzed simultaneously within configuration called mask. Due high demand from astronomers, pointing spectrograph’s sky, rotating it, selecting conform mask crucial for efficient use spectrometer. describes this problem, presents Mixed Integer Linear Programming formulation case where rotation angle fixed, non-convex unfixed, heuristic approach general discusses computational results on real-world randomly-generated instances.