GeminiFocus January 2016 | Page 18

Visiting Instruments Figures 5-6. (upper): HIP 74432, a solar-analog star observed with GRACES in 1-fibre (objectonly) mode. (lower) For comparison, Feige 66, an O-type spectrophotometric standard star observed in the same mode. Both spectra have resolving power in excess of 65,000. Gemini continues to welcome visiting instruments. After an absence of a few years, Phoenix (high-resolution near-infrared spectrograph) returns to Gemini South in 2016A. Also in the south, we will host a first run for the dual-band Differential Speckle Survey Instrument (DSSI). Watch the Call for Proposals pages for these opportunities. You may also have noticed that GRACES, our high-resolution spectroscopy capability realized by sharing CFHT’s ESPaDOnS Spectrograph, is now listed with the other facility instruments on the web pages, where previously we listed it as a “visitor” instrument. In reality, GRACES is neither, but it has some of the properties of both. GRACES relies on a sharing agreement with CFHT, so we necessarily schedule it in a limited number of blocks per semester; we cannot fully integrate it into the queue as we do with facility instruments. In that respect, it is not dissimilar to instruments such as NIRI and NICI, which have relatively limited usage and are not always installed on the telescope. The project which developed GRACES was not tasked to deliver a facility instrument, but to give us a reasonably sensitive highresolution spectroscopy capability; we would then monitor its performance and usage for about a year before deciding whether it should become better integrated into the Observatory’s observing systems. We’re now in that latter stage with GRACES, running the instrument for real and gauging demand and success (Figures 5 and 6). If you want to see how GRACES performs on a range of targets, refer to the sample data taken in the run-up to the 2015B Semester. You can get preview images of the reduced spectra here. 16 GeminiFocus January 2016