Figure 5.
Comparison of Europa
observed with Gemini
Planet Imager in K1 band
on the right and visible
albedo visualization based
on a composite map
made from Galileo SSI
and Voyager 1 and 2 data
(from USGS) on the left.
While GPI is not designed
for “extended” objects like
this, its observations could
help in following surface
alterations on icy satellites
of Jupiter or atmospheric
phenomena (e.g., clouds,
haze) on Saturn’s moon
Titan. The GPI nearinfrared color image is
a combination of three
wavelength channels.
per second. Early studies for the GPI project were spearheaded by the University of
California’s Center for Adaptive Optics, with
funding from the National Science Foundation. Donald Gavel, at Lick Observatory UC
Santa Cruz, led laboratory research efforts
that proved the micromirror and coronagraph technologies. Scientists at the American Museum of Natural History, led by Ben
Oppenheimer (who also led a project demonstrating some of the same technologies
used in GPI on the 5-meter Palomar project) designed special masks that are part of
the instrument’s coronagraph which blocks
the bright starlight that can obscure faint
planets. Engineer Kent Wallace and a team
from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory constructed an ultra-precise infrared wavefront
sensor to measure small distortions in star-
light that might mask a planet. A team at the
University of California Los Angeles’ Infrared
Laboratory, under the supervision of Professor James Larkin, together with Rene Doyon
at the University of Montreal, assembled the
infrared spectrograph that dissects the light
from planets. Data analysis software written
at University of Montreal and the Space Telescope Science Institute assembles the raw
spectrograph data into three-dimensional
cubes. NRC Herzberg in British Columbia
Canada, built the mechanical structure and
software that knits all the pieces together.
James R. Graham, as project scientist, led
the definition of the instrument’s capabi ]Y\ˈH[