may be awarded to profit or nonprofit institutions or companies outside of the nations
that fund the Gemini Observatory’s instrument program.
Gemini encourages collaborations and will
provide a mechanism for groups to find additional partners to form a complete team
for this work. Thus, groups with some interest in GIFS, but lacking the complete expertise needed to complete the work, should
still submit a letter of intent and use our system to find additional partners for the work.
The following timeline applies: A Bidders
Conference will be held on October 31st;
notice of intent to submit a proposal is due
November 17th; and the deadline to submit
proposals will be on December 15th at 23:00
Pacific Standard Time.
ditional noise. The current system had mechanisms which moved small probes where
each of the three guide stars were located
in the image. This led to reliability problems
with the mechanisms and throughput issues
related to the probe design.
The new ANU-designed system will be able
to image the entire field, allowing the control software to measure the jitter of stars
in the field without any moving parts. The
NGS2 subsystem will be delivered by 2016.
It is expected to remarkably increase the
amount of sky available for GeMS observations, improve image quality, and increase
the robustness of the GeMS system.
The GIFS Project Team looks forward to hearing from you. For full details, please visit our
website here.
NGS Upgrade
AURA/Gemini and the Australian National
University (ANU) have entered into an agreement to significantly upgrade the Gemini
Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics System
(GeMS) at Gemini South. The advanced technology of GeMS requires the use of up to
three Natural Guide Stars (NGS). These are
measured by an NGS subsystem, which
helps stabilize the images by removing jitter seen by the science camera.
ANU will design and build a new NGS subsystem, called the Natural Guide Star New
Generation Sensor 2 (NGS2). NGS2 will be
10 times more sensitive than the current
NGS subsystem and will operate with no
moving parts.
This is possible due to recent advancements
in imaging detector technology, which can
image most of the GeMS field-of-view several
hundred times per second with very little ad-
October 2014
GeminiFocus
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