First light (at ING): Expected 2021
Description: WEAVE is a new wide-field MOS (multi-object spectroscopy) facility for the William Herschel Telescope (WHT). It will be mounted at WHT prime focus, behind a new field and atmospheric dispersion correctors, which will provide good image quality over a 2-degree field of view, at zenith distances up to 65 degrees.
The instrument can be used in any of 3 focal-plane modes: MOS (multi-object spectroscopy, up to 1000 fibres), mIFU (20 mini integral-field units, each with field 11 x 12 arcsec2 or 37 fibres) and LIFU (large integral-field unit, field 90 x 78 arcsec2 or 547 central fibres, and 8 bundles around the edge with 7 fibres for sky subtraction.).
WEAVE fibres feed a dual-arm (blue + red) spectrograph housed on one Nasmyth platform of the WHT. A 5900-A dichroic splits the light between the blue and red arms. Dispersion is effected by inserting one of three VPH gratings (one low-resolution, two high-res) in the blue arm, and one of two (low-res or high-res) in the red arm. In low-resolution mode, WEAVE covers the wavelength range 3660 - 9590 Å, while the ranges 4040-4650 Å, 4730-5450 Å, 5950-6850 Å are covered in high-resolution mode.
Logo:
Time allocations:
Nights scheduled since semester 2007B
Instrument information: http://www.ing.iac.es/astronomy/instruments/weave/weaveinst.html
Research impact:
Scientific highlights (1)
Publications (53 from ING paper count)
Public outreach:
Media releases (35)
Multimedia:
Photo archive (175)
Video archive (42)
