The wide-field, multiplexed, spectroscopic facility WEAVE: Survey design, overview, and simulated implementation

Jin, Shoko; Trager, Scott C.; Dalton, Gavin B.; Aguerri, J. A. L.; Drew, J. E.; Falcón-Barroso, Jesús; Gänsicke, Boris T.; Hill, Vanessa; Iovino, Angela; Pieri, Matthew M.; Poggianti, Bianca M.; Smith, D. J. B.; Vallenari, Antonella; Abrams, Don Carlos; Aguado, David S.; Antoja, Teresa; Aragón-Salamanca, Alfonso; Ascasibar, Yago; Babusiaux, Carine; Balcells, Marc; Barrena, R.; Battaglia, Giuseppina; Belokurov, Vasily; Bensby, Thomas; Bonifacio, Piercarlo; Bragaglia, Angela; Carrasco, Esperanza; Carrera, Ricardo; Cornwell, Daniel J.; Domínguez-Palmero, Lilian; Duncan, Kenneth J.; Famaey, Benoit; Fariña, Cecilia; Gonzalez, Oscar A.; Guest, Steve; Hatch, Nina A.; Hess, Kelley M.; Hoskin, Matthew J.; Irwin, Mike; Knapen, Johan H.; Koposov, Sergey E.; Kuchner, Ulrike; Laigle, Clotilde; Lewis, Jim; Longhetti, Marcella; Lucatello, Sara; Méndez-Abreu, Jairo; Mercurio, Amata; Molaeinezhad, Alireza; Monguió, Maria; Morrison, Sean; Murphy, David N. A.; Peralta de Arriba, Luis; Pérez, Isabel; Pérez-Ràfols, Ignasi; Picó, Sergio; Raddi, Roberto; Romero-Gómez, Mercè; Royer, Frédéric; Siebert, Arnaud; Seabroke, George M.; Som, Debopam; Terrett, David; Thomas, Guillaume; Wesson, Roger; Worley, C. Clare; Alfaro, Emilio J.; Allende Prieto, Carlos; Alonso-Santiago, Javier; Amos, Nicholas J.; Ashley, Richard P.; Balaguer-Núñez, Lola; Balbinot, Eduardo; Bellazzini, Michele; Benn, Chris R.; Berlanas, Sara R.; Bernard, Edouard J.; Best, Philip; Bettoni, Daniela; Bianco, Andrea; Bishop, Georgia; Blomqvist, Michael; Boeche, Corrado; Bolzonella, Micol; Bonoli, Silvia; Bosma, Albert; Britavskiy, Nikolay; Busarello, Gianni; Caffau, Elisabetta; Cantat-Gaudin, Tristan; Castro-Ginard, Alfred; Couto, Guilherme; Carbajo-Hijarrubia, Juan; Carter, David; Casamiquela, Laia; Conrado, Ana M.; Corcho-Caballero, Pablo; Costantin, Luca; Deason, Alis; de Burgos, Abel et al.
Bibliographical reference

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Advertised on:
5
2024
Number of authors
215
IAC number of authors
20
Citations
124
Refereed citations
98
Description
WEAVE, the new wide-field, massively multiplexed spectroscopic survey facility for the William Herschel Telescope, saw first light in late 2022. WEAVE comprises a new 2-deg field-of-view prime-focus corrector system, a nearly 1000-multiplex fibre positioner, 20 individually deployable 'mini' integral field units (IFUs), and a single large IFU. These fibre systems feed a dual-beam spectrograph covering the wavelength range 366-959 nm at R ~ 5000, or two shorter ranges at $R\sim 20\, 000$. After summarizing the design and implementation of WEAVE and its data systems, we present the organization, science drivers, and design of a five- to seven-year programme of eight individual surveys to: (i) study our Galaxy's origins by completing Gaia's phase-space information, providing metallicities to its limiting magnitude for ~3 million stars and detailed abundances for ~1.5 million brighter field and open-cluster stars; (ii) survey ~0.4 million Galactic-plane OBA stars, young stellar objects, and nearby gas to understand the evolution of young stars and their environments; (iii) perform an extensive spectral survey of white dwarfs; (iv) survey ~400 neutral-hydrogen-selected galaxies with the IFUs; (v) study properties and kinematics of stellar populations and ionized gas in z < 0.5 cluster galaxies; (vi) survey stellar populations and kinematics in ${\sim} 25\, 000$ field galaxies at 0.3 ≲ z ≲ 0.7; (vii) study the cosmic evolution of accretion and star formation using >1 million spectra of LOFAR-selected radio sources; and (viii) trace structures using intergalactic/circumgalactic gas at z > 2. Finally, we describe the WEAVE Operational Rehearsals using the WEAVE Simulator.
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