Final optical design for the WEAVE two-degree prime focus corrector

Agócs, T.; Abrams, Don Carlos; Lhomé, Emilie; Dee, Kevin; Dalton, Gavin; Middleton, Kevin; Bonifacio, Piercarlo; Aguerri, J. A. L.; Trager, S. C.
Referencia bibliográfica

Proceedings of the SPIE, Volume 9147, id. 914773 14 pp. (2014).

Fecha de publicación:
7
2014
Número de autores
9
Número de autores del IAC
1
Número de citas
5
Número de citas referidas
1
Descripción
WEAVE is the next-generation wide-field optical spectroscopy facility for the William Herschel Telescope (WHT) in La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain. We present the final optical design for the two-degree Prime Focus Corrector (PFC) for the WHT optimised for WEAVE. The nominal optical design provides a polychromatic PSF that does not exceed 0.6 arcsec (80% encircled energy diameter) over a wavelength range from 370 to 1000 nm covering a two-degree field-of-view (FOV) for zenith angles up to 65 degrees. We describe the optical issues that had to be addressed prior to the Final Design Review (FDR) and present the trade-offs that were necessary between manufacturability and performance. We detail the results of an in-depth Monte Carlo simulation that contains all the manufacturing, alignment and stability issues that affect the PSF error budget of the Prime Focus Corrector. As a result of multiple iterations regarding the different tolerances of the system, the polychromatic PSF (80% encircled energy diameter) including all errors stays below the required 1 arcsec.