Scot Kleinman, Benoit Neichel, and Maxime Boccas
Instrument Development Update
The development team at Gemini and its partner institutions are nearing
completion on a variety of ongoing instrument projects. This report presents
updates on most of the projects currently underway or in planning.
Since our last report in the June 2012 issue of GeminiFocus, the development team at Gemini,
and our large family of partner institutions throughout the Gemini community, have worked
hard on a variety of ongoing instrument projects. Many of these are nearing completion, and
a few are just getting started. Here we provide a brief status report on our largest projects.
GeMS Progress
Figure 1.
A portion of the star
cluster NGC 1851
acquired in H-band.
The full-width at
half-maximum of
the stars are around
120 milliarcseconds
and uniform
across the 85 x 85
arcsecond field-ofview of GSAOI.
Since May 2012, the Gemini Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics System (GeMS) has
been in engineering shutdown. As in 2011,
we decided to exploit the Chilean winter
(during which time conditions are less favorable for AO observations) to work on
several upgrades for GeMS. We had three
main objectives: 1) to optimize and improve the sensitivity of the Natural Guide
Star Wave-Front Sensor (NGSWFS); 2) to add
remote control and automation in the Laser
and Beam Transfer Optics; and 3) prepare
the instrument’s software for the transition
of GeMS into operations.
December2012
GeminiFocus
29