What is WAS?
WAS is the
WEAVE is a new wide-field spectroscopy facility mounted on the prime focus of the 4.2m William Herschel Telescope. The facility comprises a new 2-degree field-of-view prime focus corrector with a 1000-multiplex fibre positioner, a small number of individually deployable integral field units, and a large single integral field unit. The IFUs and the MOS fibres can be used to feed a dual-beam spectrograph that will provide full coverage of the majority of the visible spectrum in a single exposure at a spectral resolution of ~5000 or modest wavelength coverage in both arms at a resolution ~20000. The instrument provides spectroscopic sampling of the fainter end of the Gaia astrometric catalogue, chemical labelling of stars to V~17, and dedicated follow up of substantial numbers of sources from the medium deep LOFAR surveys.