Construction progress of WEAVE: the next generation wide-field spectroscopy facility for the William Herschel Telescope

Dalton, Gavin; Trager, Scott; Abrams, Don Carlos; Bonifacio, Piercarlo; Aguerri, J. Alfonso L.; Vallenari, Antonella; Middleton, Kevin; Benn, Chris; Dee, Kevin; Sayède, Frédéric; Lewis, Ian; Pragt, Johannes; Picó, Sergio; Walton, Nicholas; Rey, Jeurg; Allende, Carlos; Lhomé, Émilie; Terrett, David; Brock, Matthew; Gilbert, James; Ridings, Andy; Verheijen, Marc; Tosh, Ian; Steele, Iain; Stuik, Remko; Kroes, Gabby; Tromp, Neils; Kragt, Jan; Lesman, Dirk; Mottram, Chris; Bates, Stuart; Gribbin, Frank; Burgal, José Alonso; Herreros, Jose Miguel; Delgado, Jose Miguel; Martin, Carlos; Cano, Diego; Navarro, Ramón; Irwin, Mike; Lewis, James; Gonzales Solares, Eduardo; O'Mahony, Neil; Bianco, Andrea; Zurita, Christina; ter Horst, Rik; Molinari, Emilio; Lodi, Marcello; Guerra, José; Baruffolo, Andrea; Carrasco, Esperanza; Farkas, Szigfrid; Schallig, Ellen; Hill, Vanessa; Smith, Dan; Drew, Janet; Poggianti, Bianca; Pieri, Mat; Jin, Shoko; Dominquez Palmero, Lilian; Fariña, Cecilia; Martin, Adrian; Worley, Clare; Murphy, David; Hidalgo, Andrea; Mignot, Shan; Bishop, Georgia; Guest, Steve; Elswijk, Eddy; de Haan, Menno; Hanenburg, Hiddo; Salasnich, Bernardo; Mayya, Divakara; Izazaga-Pérez, Rafael; Peralta de Arriba, Luis
Bibliographical reference

Proceedings of the SPIE, Volume 10702, id. 107021B 10 pp. (2018).

Advertised on:
7
2018
Number of authors
74
IAC number of authors
6
Citations
15
Refereed citations
14
Description
We present an update on the overall construction progress of the WEAVE next-generation spectroscopy facility for the William Herschel Telescope (WHT), now that all the major fabrication contracts are in place. We also present a summary of the current planning behind the 5-year initial phase of survey operations, and some detailed end-to-end science simulations that have been effected to evaluate the final on-sky performance after data processing. WEAVE will provide optical ground-based follow up of ground-based (LOFAR) and space-based (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, 20 integral field units, or a single large IFU for each observation. The fibres are fed to a single (dual-beam) spectrograph, with total of 16k spectral pixels, 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. The project has experienced some delays in procurement and now has first light expected for the middle of 2019.