(both North and South) dominated the proposal statistics.
Welcome, Korea, and we hope
this relationship is long and
fruitful. See page 22 in Science
Highlights for Korea’s first results
as a limited Gemini partner.
Pachón is granitic, while that on Maunakea
is light basalt. Granitic dust on the Gemini
South primary does not fully come off with
CO2 cleanings, whereas basaltic dust on the
Gemini North primary does. Therefore, given
only carbon dioxide cleaning, reflectivity of
the Gemini South primary would decrease
more quickly than Gemini North’s.
April 2015
First Korean Time on Gemini
With Korea now Gemini’s first limited-term
partner, the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) has taken on the job of
coordinating the vetting of proposals from
all over Korea and producing “miniqueues,”
which will be executed in pre-scheduled
blocks of time on both Gemini North and
Gemini South.
Figure 16.
Washing the Gemini
South Primary Mirror
in situ.
Gemini IRAF Software
Package Released
A new version of the Gemini Image Reduction and Analysis Facility (IRAF) software
package (v1.13) for data reduction has been
released (January 29, 2015) and is available.
This full release supersedes the recent commissioning and patch releases.
Of special note, this latest release will support GMOS-S Hamamatsu data with quantum efficiency corrections, provide new and
improved tasks in support of GMOS integral
field unit data reduction, and offer better
handling of variance and data quality planes
throughout the GMOS package.
The new package is available for download
on this web page.
Figure 17.
The first Korean
observing team at
Gemini North, shown
here while making
observations in March.
The Korean community showed great interest in observing at Gemini North and a total
of seven Principal Investigators or Co-Investigators, plus three KASI staff, helped with
implementation of the programs during an
intense week carried out in Priority Visitor
observing mode (see Figure 17). The science
is varied — star clusters, active Galactic nuclei, galaxy clusters, high-redshift galaxies,
etc. — but mostly of extragalactic nature.
The Gemini Multi-Object Spectrographs
January 2016
2015 Year in Review
GeminiFocus
45