Figure 2 . GHOST team members
( left to right ) Tony Farrell , John Bassett , Gabriella
Baker , Ross Zhelem , Peter Young , Lew Waller , Richard McDermid , Steve Margheim , and Manuel Gomez observe some of the first light captured by the GHOST Cassegrain unit at Cerro Pachón .
Credit : David Henderson
Figure 3 . Massimo Robberto , the new OCTOCAM Principal Investigator .
minute field-of-view , and verified that target acquisition ( both direct and via spiral search ) worked as expected in both the single target and two target modes . The team is enthusiastic about the performance of the GHOST Cassegrain unit and look forward to the arrival of the spectrograph from Canada ’ s National Research Council-Herzberg .
— David Henderson and Catherine Blough
OCTOCAM Making Great Strides
OCTOCAM — Gemini ’ s next generation imager and spectrograph — has had a busy start to 2018 . In January , a Quarterly Progress Review took place at George Washington University in the United States and at FRACTAL S . L . N . E . ( a private technological company specialized in astronomical instrumentation and scientific software working on the instrument ’ s optomechanicals ) in Madrid , Spain .
In March , Gemini Observatory announced Massimo Robberto of Space Telescope Science Institute and Johns Hopkins University as the new OCTOCAM Principal Investigator ( Figure 3 ). OCTOCAM also welcomed Todd Veach of Southwest Research Institute ( SwRI ) in San Antonio , Texas , as the OCTO- CAM Instrument Scientist .
Coming up , the Preliminary Design Review will take place at SwRI on April 4-5 , 2018 . John Troeltzsch of Ball Aerospace will chair the external review panel , which has deep expertise and a world of experience in instrumentation development and project management . OCTOCAM remains on schedule ( and on budget ) to be commissioned by the start of 2023 .
— Andrea Blank
TOPTICA Laser at Gemini South
After over two years of feasibility studies , specifications , design studies , tests , integrations , and validations , Gemini South ’ s new TOPTICA Phototronics AG laser had its first night of commissioning on October 26 , 2017 . It took only ten minutes for the upgrade project ’ s team of scientists , observers , and engineers to see our lovely five laser guide star constellation back on sky using the acquisition camera ; and it took them only three nights out of five to validate the laser ’ s performance ; during the tests , the laser did not suffer any faults , and its output power was very stable at 22 watts .
Since the commissioning , we have had two very successful science runs , during which the laser remained very stable with no faults occurring . Even with its power being much lower than that of its Lockheed Martin Coherent Technologies predecessor , the return flux has been very sufficient to keep stable closed loop operation ( even during low sodium sea-
14 GeminiFocus April 2018