Prabhani Rajakaruna earned her Master of Science in Physics at
Central Michigan University, following her BS at the University of
Peradeniya in Sri Lanka. She completed a four-month project at
Gemini North, testing the data reduction pipeline and improving
the data quality for the Observatory’s new high-resolution optical
spectrograph GRACES. This involved verifying the stability of the
spectrograph focus with temperature and pressure, and identify-
ing the optimal parameters for the calibration process. Prabhani
has also written a script to gather the ideal calibrations for each
GRACES observation in order to send the best data to the archive.
In addition, she has thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to ob-
serve with Gemini and see GRACES in action.
Piera A. Soto King earned her BS and MS at the Universidad de La Serena in
Chile. She is working with Rodolfo Angeloni at Gemini South on spectroscop-
ic confirmations of candidate symbiotic stars. Symbiotic stars are long-period
interacting binaries composed of a hot compact star and an evolved giant
star. For her six-month project, Piera will reduce and analyze long-slit spec-
troscopic data of a carefully selected sample of symbiotic star candidates to
fully characterize their nature. She is also working on a proposal to observe
more candidates for this project with the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph
at Gemini South.
Keep an eye out for more great work from
these students as they move forward in their
careers, and please do check the Gemini job
opportunities link for internship opportuni-
ties at both Gemini North and South.
Alison Peck is an Instrument Program Scientist
at Gemini North. She can be reached at:
[email protected]
January 2018 / 2017 Year in Review
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