Fiber positioner system selection for the Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer (MSE)

The Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer (MSE) is a project to upgrade the 3.6-meter telescope and instrumentation of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) into a 11.25-meter telescope equipped with fiber-fed spectrographs dedicated to optical and near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopic surveys of millions of faint stars and galaxies. The current baseline for MSE is that of a prime focus, 10-meter effective aperture telescope feeding a bank of low and moderate spectral resolution spectrographs (LR, R~3000 and MR, R~6000) located on plat- forms, as well as high spectral resolution spectrographs (HR, R~20000-40000) located in the more stable pier of the telescope. The 1.5 square degree field of view of MSE will be populated with more than 3200 fibers of 100 diameter allocated to the LMR spectrographs, and more than 1000 fibers of 0.800 for the HR spectrographs. MSE completed its Conceptual Design Phase early in 2018 and is about to enter its Preliminary Design Phase.