March 1992. First scheduled
observation: August 1992.
De-commissioned: June 1999.
Designed and built
by: Durham University and RGO.
Description: The Low Dispersion
Survey Spectrograph (LDSS-2), mounted at the Cassegrain focus of the WHT, is a system designed to obtain spectra of objects
lying in the apparent magnitude range 20 to 23. In the case of these faint
objects one requires a spectrograph of high efficiency avoiding light losses
that occur in fibre feeds. The LDSS system is a focal reducer providing
a collimated space where grisms of different dispersion may be placed.
A focal plane mask is used to isolate the objects to be studied together
with regions of night sky, and multiple spectra may be recorded on a CCD.
Some scientific highlights:
More information: LDSS-2
Users' Manual
More photos of this instrument: http://www.ing.iac.es/PR/archive/wht/instruments.html
