Journal article
The wide-field, multiplexed, spectroscopic facility WEAVE: survey design, overview, and simulated implementation
- Abstract:
- WEAVE, the new wide-field, massively multiplexed spectroscopic survey facility for the William Herschel Telescope, will see first light in late 2022. WEAVE comprises a new 2-degree 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 ∼ 20 000. After summarising the design and implementation of WEAVE and its data systems, we present the organisation, 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 ionised gas in z < 0.5 cluster galaxies; (vi) survey stellar populations and kinematics in ∼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; (viii) trace structures using intergalactic/circumgalactic gas at z > 2. Finally, we describe the WEAVE Operational Rehearsals using the WEAVE Simulator.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 9.0MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1093/mnras/stad557
Authors
+ Science and Technology Facilities Council
More from this funder
- Grant:
- ST/M002128/1
- ST/K005103/1
- ST/J005584/1
- ST/S000488/1
- ST/P003451/1
- ST/N006666/1
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- Journal:
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society More from this journal
- Volume:
- 530
- Issue:
- 3
- Pages:
- 2688-2730
- Publication date:
- 2023-03-11
- Acceptance date:
- 2022-12-05
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
1365-2966
- ISSN:
-
0035-8711
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
-
1311836
- Local pid:
-
pubs:1311836
- Deposit date:
-
2022-12-07
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Jin et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2023
- Rights statement:
- © The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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