First results of tests on the WEAVE fibres

WEAVE is a new wide-field spectroscopy facility proposed for 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 (Integral Field Units) and the MOS (Multi Object Spectrograph) 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 is expected to be on-sky by the first quarter of 2018 to provide spectroscopic sampling of the fainter end of the Gaia astrometric catalogue, chemical labeling of stars to V 17, and dedicated follow up of substantial numbers of sources from the medium deep LOFAR surveys. After a brief description of the Fibre System, we describe the fibre test bench, its calibration, and some test results. We have to verify 1920 fibres from the MOS bundles and 740 fibres from the mini-IFU bundles with the test bench. In particular, we present the Focal Ratio Degradation of a cable.