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Deep, optical wide-field imaging is essential in nearly every area of astronomy and for science at all wavelengths for source localisation and other applications. As a testament, wide-field imagers are the highest demand instruments on their respective telescopes. The Australian-led Keck Wide-Field Imager (KWFI) is a 1-degree diameter field of view UV-sensitive optical camera for Keck telescopes. KWFI will be the most powerful wide-field camera in the world for the foreseeable future and the only such 8m-class camera sensitive from 1000 nm down to 300 nm. KWFI can reach game-changing magnitudes of m ~ 28 - 30 (~25 - 4 nano-Jy) depths over wide fields, including the u-band as a result of Keck’s 10m aperture and 4100m elevation. KWFI performs a critical role for existing and new spectroscopic instruments for 8m and 30m-class telescopes in which Australia is invested, for SKA, CTA, GMT, E-ELT, and JWST science, upcoming wide-field space missions Roman and Euclid, and current and next-generation gravitational wave detectors. In this talk, I will discuss the KWFI instrument, its status, and path forward, as well as associated Keck access for Australians. KWFI will enable world-leading science that cannot be done on any other telescope anywhere else in the world or in space, not even with 30-metre telescopes. Examples include: Epoch of Reionisation science mapping ionising flux to complement SKA’s goal to map neutral gas; discovering nearly all kilonovae detected by gravitational wave detectors that will be missed by current facilities (> 90%); and many other areas of science from the solar system, to the Milky Way and local/low-redshift galaxy stellar populations and metallicities, low surface brightness and diffuse galaxies, to large-scale structure and the high redshift Universe, to time domain science. KWFI reaches 2/3rds of the Southern Hemisphere sky, as well as the full Northern Hemisphere sky, enabling Australians to lead the world in all these science areas and more. |
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