Wide field optical and IR spectroscopy at the ING: present and future prospects

The present status and performance of the fibre positioner AUTOFIB2 and spe ctrograph WYFFOS are reviewed. After extensive re-engineering of the AUTOFI B2 robot and fibre module, the system is now reliable, setting up a science field in under 30 min with better than 10 mum internal accuracy (the origi nal specifications). Since the rebuild AUTOFIB2 has been scheduled on some 50 nights and undergone more than 50 000 fibre movements with only one fail ure (and a number of back illumination failures of a minor nature). WYFFOS is now fully commissioned in both reflection and 'echelle' mode. By summer 2001 both the small fibre module (1.6 arcsec diameter) and the WYFFOS long camera will be commissioned. These upgrades will make this system amongst t he most sensitive on any 4 m telescope. A series of relatively minor softwa re and fibre module upgrades are also proposed (some of which will be imple mented soon) which will allow 150 fibre movements in 10-15 min and crossing fibres. Further in the future we propose the development of a fibre module and WYFFOS optics optimized for the near IR and also a small fibre module containing 600 fibres (2 fibres per button) that at the very least will be useful for sky subtraction and beam-switching (depending on technological d evelopments). (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.