the transition into regular operations.
The objective is to progressively reduce
the amount of staff required to operate
the system at night. This will be achieved
by deploying more high-level software
and diagnostic tools. The first semester of
regular science operations was also intensively used for cross-training within the
various teams supporting GeMS/GSAOI.
Figure 5.
NGC 4038, one of the
Antennae Galaxies,
imaged by GeMS/
GSAOI during System
Verification.
that allows shaping the laser constellation and propagating the beams on the
sky, will be optimized with better coatings
and a control of the light’s polarization.
A third performance upgrade is also in the
works for the next semester, and it concerns
the Natural Guide Star wave-front sensor.
Due to minor design and alignment issues,
the current limiting magnitude achievable is
around 15.5 in the visible. This dramatically
reduces the number of targets obtainable
outside of the Galactic plane. A completely
new design, based on a recently developed low noise focal plane array, has been
approved, and should be implemented in
GeMS before the end of 2014. This fix is expected to boost the sensitivity of the system, allowing researchers to acquire stars as
faint as 18.5 in visible light, hence increasing
the portion of the sky accessible to GeMS.
On another front, there is also a large ongoing effort to smooth the “operation
ability” of the GeMS system, and perform
18
GeminiFocus
GeMS/GSAOI is now available through the
regular Call for Proposals process. The 2013A
semester, offered as “shared-risk,” received 11
programs, for 80 hours allocated. At the time
of this writing, eight were completed and
two started. Semester 13B has been open
for 150 available hours, which were recently
allocated with 16 programs, and plans currently allow for this level of GeMS availability
for the foreseeable semesters ahead. In the
near-future, the goal will also be to diversify
the science capabilities, by offering GeMS
for FLAMINGOS-2 and possibly even the
Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (observing at the red-end of the visible spectrum).
Impacting the Future of
Astronomy…
After about 10 years of development,
and almost 100 nights of commissioning,
GeMS/GSAOI is now producing unique science! This accomplishment paves the way
for future AO developments, and especially for the next generation of Extremely
Large Telescopes, for which running multilaser AO systems will be the baseline.
Benoit Neichel is an adaptive optics scientist at
Gemini South. He can be reached at:
[email protected]
Rodrigo Carrasco is an astronomer at Gemini
South. He can be reached at:
rcarrasco@@gemini.edu
July2013