with a best performance of 0.4 arcsecond
Full Width at Half Maximum at the J band,
across the 6 arcminute field-of-view.
GeMS Completes Successful Run:
Frontier Fields Images Released!
Figure 5.
After having its decker
wheel mechanism
repaired, FLAMINGOS-2 is
operational and working
on several observing
programs in the current
semester.
Figure 6.
Despite bad weather,
astronomers using the
Gemini Multi-Conjugate
Adaptive Optics System
(GeMs) got one clear night
during its most recent
run, which was enough
to provide nice images for
the Gemini Frontier Fields.
across the partnership. The requested observing modes cover all the offered configurations: YJHKs imaging, and spectroscopy in
five different spectral ranges. F-2 offers an average spectral resolution of 900 namometers
for the spectral ranges JH and HK, and 2500
for J, H, and Ks.
In July 2014, F-2 was back on-sky after two
weeks of shutdown for repairing its decker
wheel mechanism. Queue observations
were resumed, guided with the telescope’s
peripheral wavefront sensor. After the shutdown, the K-band internal background was
found to be higher than normal in the HK
spectroscopy mode, because the gate valve
baffle was not positioning properly. Until a
new instrument shutdown is programmed,
the HK range spectroscopy observations of
targets fainter than Ks ~ 16 have been put
on hold. Good image quality is regularly
achieved under good seeing conditions,
The Gemini Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics System (GeMS) completed a successful observing run during September. Poor
weather conditions meant that only one of
eight nights was used to observe science
programs. Nevertheless, the GeMS team
achieved several goals, including eliminating
the elongation of images, providing a stable
laser at 30 watts, and producing nice images
of the giant galaxy cluster Abell 2744, for the
Gemini Frontier Fields program. View here
for more details and to access the public and
reduced data from this program.
Figure 7.
Comparison of Ks-band images (2.2 micron)
taken with GSAOI (left column) and H-band (1.6
micron) images (right) taken with HST/WFC3
(right column). While not as deep as HST data,
the new GeMS/GSAOI dataset offers twice the
resolution on the distant universe.
38
GeminiFocus
2014 Year in Review
January 2015