Detailed spectrophotometric/velocity mapping of galaxies and identifying transient GRBs and the first stars with the unique upgraded WiFeS facility

The WiFeS spectrograph has been in successful operation for the past 2 years at SSO providing unprecedented 2 dimensional spectrophotometric/velocity information on galaxies and detailed spectrophotometric and velocity information on stars. We propose to replace the aging and superseded Fairchild CCDs with faster readout, higher sensitivity and lower noise E2V CCDs in a new cryostat. We also propose to refurbish the 2.3m telescope focal plane auxiliary systems to make them more efficient and reliable for remote operation with WiFeS from our University campuses. A pipeline programmer will be employed at Swinburne for 6 months to modify and fine-tune the data reduction pipeline to better handle the large amounts of galaxy kinematical data.