The BigBOSS Experiment

Understand

BigBOSS is a Stage IV ground-based dark energy experiment to study baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) and the growth of structure with a wide-area galaxy and quasar redshift survey over 14,000 square degrees.

• It has been conditionally accepted by NOAO in response to a call for major new instrumentation and a high-impact science program for the 4-m Mayall telescope at Kitt Peak.
• The BigBOSS instrument is a robotically-actuated, fiber-fed spectrograph capable of taking 5000 simultaneous spectra over a wavelength range from 340 nm to 1060 nm, with a resolution R = 3000-4800.
• Using data from imaging surveys that are already underway, spectroscopic targets are selected that trace the underlying dark matter distribution.