Construction of the Blue-Arm of the 2.3m Telescope Wide-Field Spectograph

Australian astronomers need access to an efficient, faint-object spectrograph operating at wavelengths below 420 nm. The proposed blue arm for the new Wide-Field Spectrograph (WiFeS) on the ANU 2.3m telescope will fill that gap and give data on key spectral lines in the blue and near-ultraviolet spectral regions. This will allow us to measure stellar populations and dynamics in nearby galaxies, extract chemical abundances for the first stars to form in our Galaxy, and explore the gaseous environments of the most distant galaxies. With remote operation and high efficiency, the WiFeS blue arm meets an urgent observational need not covered by the national Anglo-Australian Observatory.