The LIGO HET Response (LIGHETR) Project to Discover and Spectroscopically Follow Optical Transients Associated with Neutron Star Mergers

The LIGO HET Response (LIGHETR) project is a group of several institutions performing spectroscopic followup of gravitational wave sources discovered by the LIGO/Virgo collaboration (LVC). LIGHETR uses two integrated field unit spectrographs (IFUs) with deep coverage in the blue, VIRUS and LRS2, both mounted on the 11 m Hobby Ebberly Telescope (HET). Our strategy is to target the most probable galaxies within the LVC sky-map, with the aim to acquire the earliest, rapidly varying, blue \textit{spectra} of the electromagnetic counterparts. Alternatively, we also perform follow-up on transient candidates identified by other observatories. The unique challenges of the observations (fixed zenith angle, IFUs) necessitate custom pipelines for rapid observation planning and data reductions using novel techniques which will be presented here.