Development of an end to end spectral image simulator for WEAVE

Thesis

The WHT Extreme Aperture Velocity Explorer (WEAVE) is a form of ground-based wide-field spectrograph, planned to be installed at the prime focus of the 4.2m William Herschel Telescope (WHT). The instrument has a two degree field of view and full coverage of the visible wavelength from 366nm to 950nm. Using fibre-optic pick-offs at the focal plane, it can also observe up to 960 simultaneous spectra for each configuration. The fibre-fed spectrograph consists of a collimator mirror, dichroic and two correcting lenses before each of two volume phase holographic (VPH) gratings and two eight-lens cameras. The two cameras have been designed to have the same lens shapes and have almost the same glass blank and the design also reduces the ghost between the surfaces of the lenses. The unique part of the instrument is called the 'Positioner'; fibres on the positioner can be moved in the focal plane to pick the required target.

The WEAVE survey is expected to start observing by 2018. Here we report on the development of the details of an end-to-end image simulator for WEAVE which can be used to generate data to test the image processing and analysis pipelines. The WEAVE simulator is aimed to: 1) verify the whole data acquisition, reduction and calibration procedure throughout the WEAVE science processing and archiving (SPA), 2) generate high signal-noise reference images that can be used as fitting templates for the extraction of the real spectra, and Point Spread Function (PSF) mapping and 3) verify the feasibility of the scientific objectives, to allow the survey planning to be optimized before the instrument is commissioned.

Authors: Jeong, H

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-vykyyk8mr
• Type of award: MSc by Research
• Level of award: Masters
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford