April 2017
Stephen Goodsell, on behalf of the OCTOCAM team
The Chosen One:
OCTOCAM (Gen4#3)
With great pleasure we proudly announce our next facility-class
instrument: OCTOCAM, a wide-band (visible/near-infrared) medium-
resolution spectrograph and imager. This powerful facility will
support a wide range of science and take advantage of the Large
Synoptic Survey Telescope follow-up opportunities.
In May 2016 Gemini released a Request for Proposals for the next facility-class Gemini instru-
ment (then known as Gen4#3). The Observatory received a total of four proposals by our
August deadline. After a thorough selection process involving internal and external experts,
we selected OCTOCAM, signing a contract to design, build, and commission the instrument
with the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in San Antonio, Texas, in March 2017.
The OCTOCAM team began immediately thereafter to work on the Conceptual Design Stage,
with Antonio de Ugarte Postigo (Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, of the Consejo Su-
perior de Investigaciones Científicas (IAA-CSIC)) as the Principal Investigator, Pete Roming
(SwRI) as the Project Manager, Alexander van der Horst (The George Washington University)
as the Project Scientist and Christina Thöne (IAA-CSIC) as the Deputy Project Manager. A ma-
jor member of the collaboration includes FRACTAL S.L.N.E. (a private technological company
specialized in astronomical instrumentation). Together, we intend to commission OCTOCAM
at Gemini South for general use before the 2023 planned start of Large Synoptic Survey Tele-
scope (LSST) operations.
What is OCTOCAM?
OCTOCAM is an eight-channel imager and spectrograph that will simultaneously observe
the g, r, i, z, Y, J, H, and K S bands in a 3’ x 3’ field-of-view. It will obtain long slit (3’ long) spec-
January 2018 / 2017 Year in Review
GeminiFocus
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