tremely strong, resulting in many successful
proposals for 2018A.
As a visiting instrument, IGRINS is ideal be-
cause it has a single observing mode and
contains no moving parts (Figure 15). By ex-
changing the input optics to accommodate
Gemini, the IGRINS H and K echellograms
will be unchanged between facilities. In
March, the instrument team (Figures 16-18)
will accompany IGRINS to Gemini South,
where they will install and test it before sup-
porting observations with the help of Gemi-
ni staff for a total of 50 nights (Figures 19 and
20). The team also will provide a simple data
reduction pipeline to assist novice users.
At the moment, much work needs to be
done to carry out the large number of
planned 2018A observations and provide
the data to the community — so there are
no immediate plans to make IGRINS avail-
able next semester. We do hope, however,
to host IGRINS at Gemini again in the future,
as well as other unique and compelling ca-
pabilities. Remember to keep an eye on fu-
ture Gemini Calls for Proposals!
Daniel Jaffe of UT Austin is the IGRINS Prin-
cipal Investigator (PI). Chan Park of KASI is
both deputy PI and KASI instrument PI. Jae-
Joon Lee at KASI supervises the IGRINS op-
erational program on the Korean side. The
IGRINS visit to Gemini is supported by the
US National Science Foundation under grant
AST-1702267 (PI — Gregory Mace, UT Aus-
tin), and by the Korean GMT Project of KASI.
Further technical details are available in Yuk
et al. (2010), Park et al. (2014), and Mace et al.
(2016).
Figure 18.
IGRINS and Gemini team
collaboration during a
site visit to Gemini South
(Hwihyun Kim, Brian
Chinn, Kimberly Sokal,
Greg Mace, and John
Good, from left to right
respectively).
Credit: Kimberly Sokal
(UT Austin).
Figure 19.
Left: The IGRINS
spectrograph slit (white
bar) and a graduated
scale used to measure
optical performance.
Lines resolved well below
the slit width show that
IGRINS optics for Gemini
will perform as designed
and sensitivity will be
optimized.
Figure 20.
Right: The modified
ballast weight assembly
waiting in Chile to attach
IGRINS to the telescope.
Credit: Brian Chinn
(Gemini)
January 2019 / 2018 Year in Review
GeminiFocus
55