GeminiFocus July 2016 | Page 3

Markus Kissler-Patig Director’s Message How would you prefer Gemini to look in the future? Gemini is preparing for the next decade. As mentioned in the April 2016 issue of GeminiFocus, the Gemini Board of Directors has set up a Strategic Vision Committee to provide guidance for the years 2022 and beyond. Does the thought of planning that far into the future make you dizzy? It should not; if we want the Observatory to perform optimally in the next decade, we need to set the course in the next few years. And in order to get your input, we have launched a user poll (accessible here) and would be delighted to hear from you until the end of July 2016. Various ideas have already been suggested. For instance, the Gemini Board of Directors and its Science and Technology Advisory Committee have proposed some highlevel principles (see the poll’s first six questions); please let us know if you agree with these. Furthermore, the Strategic Vision Committee has shared some (partial or full) specialization scenarios for Gemini North and South (13 short descriptions are listed in the poll); would you subscribe to any of these for the decade 2022-2032? Take the poll and let us know what you think! Visiting Instruments on the Rise We continue to have many requests for visitor instruments to be used on the Gemini 8-meter telescopes. As per our policy, we offer these instruments to our users when they prove to operate well in the Gemini environment. For instance, after several successful visits to Gemini North, the Differential Speckle Survey Instrument is now offered at Gemini South. Also, PHOENIX (a previous Gemini instrument) had its first run in midMay as a visiting instrument at Gemini South. In the North, GRACES continues to be immensely popular and makes great use of the Canada-France-Hawai‘i spectrograph ESPaDOnS. And in 2018, look for two new visiting instruments: POLISH2 (a highly specialized polarimeter for inclination studies of “hot Jupiters”) that Sloane Wiktorowicz of July 2016 GeminiFocus 1