Calibration at elevation of the WEAVE fibre positioner

Conference item

WEAVE is the new wide-field spectroscopy facility for the prime focus of the William Herschel Telescope in La Palma, Spain. Its fibre positioner is essential for the accurate placement of the spectrograph’s 960 fibre multiplex. We provide an overview of the recent maintenance, flexure modifications, and calibration measurements conducted at the observatory prior to the final top-end assembly. This work ensures that we have a complete understanding of the positioner’s behaviour as it changes orientation during observations. All fibre systems have been inspected and repaired, and the tumbler structure contains new clamps to stiffen both the internal beam and the retractor support disk onto which the field plates attach. We present the updated metrology procedures4 and results that will be verified on-sky

Authors: Hughes, S; Dalton, G; Dee, K; Abrams, DC; Middleton, K

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Society of Photo-optical Instrumentation Engineers
• Host title: Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy IX
• Journal: Proceedings of SPIE
• Volume: 12184
• Article number: 121846J
• Publication date: 2022-08-29
• Acceptance date: 2022-07-21
• Event title: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation 2022
• Event location: Montréal, Québec, Canada
• Event website: https://spie.org/conferences-and-exhibitions/astronomical-telescopes-and-instrumentation
• Event start date: 2022-07-17
• Event end date: 2022-07-22
• DOI: 10.1117/12.2627132
• ISSN: 1996-756X
• Language: English
• Keywords: WEAVE; robotic positioners; WHT; metrology; calibration; fibre spectroscopy; high multiplex spectroscopy; FFR