The Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) † , located in West Texas at the McDonald Observatory, operates with a fixed segmented primary (M1) and has a tracker, which moves the prime-focus corrector and instrument package to track the sidereal and non-sidereal motions of objects. We have completed a major multi-year upgrade of the HET that has substantially increased the pupil size to 10 meters and the field of view to 22 arcminutes by deploying the new Wide Field Corrector (WFC), new tracker system, and new Prime Focus Instrument Package (PFIP). The focus of this paper is on the delivery, installation, and on-sky verification of the WFC. We summarize the technical challenges encountered and resolutions to overcome such challenges during the construction of the system. We then detail the transportation from Tucson to the HET, on-site ground verification test results, post-installation static alignment among the WFC, PFIP, and M1, and on-sky verification of alignment and image quality via deploying multiple wavefront sensors across 22 arcminutes field of view. The new wide field HET will feed the revolutionary new integral field spectrograph called VIRUS, in support of the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX), a new low resolution spectrograph (LRS2), an upgraded high resolution spectrograph (HRS2), and later the Habitable Zone Planet Finder (HPF).

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Abstract. Nature has developed many pathways to produce medicinal products of extraordinary potency and specificity with significantly higher efficiencies than current synthetic methods can achieve. Identification of these mechanisms and their precise locations within plants could substantially increase the yield of a number of natural pharmaceutics. We report label-free imaging of Δ 9 -tetrahydrocannabinolic acid (THCa) in Cannabis sativa L. using coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering microscopy. In line with previous observations we find high concentrations of THCa in pistillate flowering bodies and relatively low amounts within flowering bracts. Surprisingly, we find differences in the local morphologies of the THCa-containing bodies: organelles within bracts are large, diffuse, and spheroidal, whereas in pistillate flowers they are generally compact, dense, and have heterogeneous structures. We have also identified two distinct vibrational signatures associated with THCa, both in pure crystalline form and within Cannabis plants; at present the exact natures of these spectra remain an open question. © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.