Figure 7.
Schematic of the GIRMOS
instrument. Light from
individual objects within
the AO field is picked off
by GIRMOS and corrected
by an additional AO
system before being fed
into the IFS units. The
IFS units offer larger
fields of view for a given
sampling scale when
compared to existing
IFSs. This offers up to ten
times the multiplexing
gain over existing AO
spectrographs.
Spectrograph (IRMOS), which will be a future
second-generation instrument. While highly
ranked scientifically, a number of potential
hurdles were identified in the original IRMOS
concepts for the TMT. MOAO, which critically
relies on open-loop control, had not been
demonstrated on-sky, and the overall cost
of the AO system and the multiple spectro-
graphs was prohibitive. These concerns led
to IRMOS not being chosen as a first-light in-
strument for the TMT.
However, the landscape has now changed
with MOAO successfully demonstrated on-
sky through technical pathfinders such as
RAVEN on Subaru, led by our team mem-
bers, and infrared integral field spectro-
graphs being well-established technology
(e.g., Gemini’s Near-Infrared Integral Field
Spectrometer). Our efforts in developing
GIRMOS will build the necessary scientific
and technical expertise to provide similar ca-
pabilities for the next generation 30-meter-
class telescopes.
We plan to commission GIRMOS in 2024 and
expect to be well positioned to offer GIR-
MOS as a workhorse survey instrument for
the Gemini community. By 2024, several ex-
citing projects should be underway, includ-
ing both the James Webb Space Telescope
and the European Space Agency’s Euclid
48
GeminiFocus
space telescope, which
promise to provide
exciting new bright,
infrared targets for
spectroscopic follow-
up. Gravitational wave
detectors such as the
Laser Interferometer
G r av i t a t i o n a l -Wave
Observatory in com-
bination with imaging
follow-up will provide
well-localized gravita-
tional wave sources.
Likewise, the Large
Synoptic Survey Telescope (now under con-
struction in Chile) and the Square Kilome-
tre Array (to be built in Australia and South
Africa) pathfinders will be detecting exotic
transient sources; and the current Atacama
Large Millimeter Array will be in an era of
providing large, well-characterized surveys.
With its multiplexing ability, and particular-
ly with the benefit of the newly announced
Gemini North AO system which should pro-
vide an even better corrected field, GIRMOS
at Gemini is ideally positioned to lead the
era of multi-messenger astronomy, under-
taking surveys of large samples of sources
discovered by these diverse state-of-the-art
telescopes.
References:
Sivanandam, S., et al., 2018, Proc. SPIE, 10702,
107021J (arXiv:1807.03797)
No Instrument Upgrade
Program Call this Year
As several projects from previous years are
still underway, we decided not to have a Call
for Proposals in our Instrument Upgrade Pro-
gram this year. We expect to release our next
call in mid-2019. Visit the IUP web pages for
more information.
January 2019 / 2018 Year in Review