WEAVE: the next generation wide-field spectroscopy facility for the William Herschel Telescope
Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering 8446 8446OP
Authors:
GB Dalton, S Trager, DC Abrams, D Carter, P Bonifacio, JAL Aguerri, M MacIntosh, CJ Evans, IJ Lewis, R Navarro, T Agocs, K Dee, S Rousset, IAJ Tosh, KF Middleton, J Pragt, Dl Terrett, M Brock, C Benn, M Verheijen, D Cano, C Bevil, I Steele, C Mottram, S Bates, F Gribbin, J Rey, LF Rodriguez, JM Delgado, I Guinouard, N Walton, M Irwin, P Jagourel, R Stuik, G Gerlofsma, R Roelfsma, I Skillen, A Ridings, M Balcells, J-B Daban, C Gouvret, L Venema, P Girard
Abstract:
We present the preliminary design of the WEAVE next generation spectroscopy facility for the William Herschel Telescope (WHT), principally targeting optical ground-based follow up of upcoming ground-based (LOFAR) and spacebased (Gaia) surveys. WEAVE is a multi-object and multi-IFU facility utilizing a new 2 degree prime focus field of view at the WHT, with a buffered pick and place positioner system hosting 1000 multi-object (MOS) fibres or up to 30 integral field units for each observation. The fibres are fed to a single spectrograph, with a pair of 8k(spectral) x 6k (spatial) pixel cameras, located within the WHT GHRIL enclosure on the telescope Nasmyth platform, supporting observations at R~5000 over the full 370-1000nm wavelength range in a single exposure, or a high resolution mode with limited coverage in each arm at R~20000.
