Announcements 2012

7 December 2012: Despite a challenging global economic climate, and often drastic funding cuts in government-funded science and technology research, a recent milestone for the Gemini Observatory sees the observatory moving forward until the end of this decade with its strong international partnership intact. However, a potential challenge lies ahead with funding uncertainty in Australia after 2015 says Gemini’s newly appointed Director Dr. Markus Kissler-Patig. “Although this might present an obstacle, it’s one with many possible solutions even if Australia cannot remain a full partner in Gemini,” said Kissler-Patig. It is in this environment that in September 2012 the Gemini Board held a retreat to discuss among other items the future of the Gemini partnership in the years 2016 to 2018, beyond the current international agreement - which extends through the end of 2015. Following this retreat, Gemini’s regularly-scheduled Board meeting, held in La Serena, Chile from November 14 to 16 resulted in …

30 November 2012: Using joint observations from Gemini South, the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO/VLT), and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT), a team of astronomers has discovered a spectacular and very rare phenomenon in galaxies. It is interpreted as a light echo from an earlier, very active, quasar phase that has since shut down. Because of these objects' unique characteristics, they appear green in some datasets giving them the colorful moniker “green-bean galaxies.” As described in the ESO press release today (December 5, 2012), Gemini astronomer Mischa Schirmer first identified an example of this odd class of object in CFHT imaging data –– a distant galaxy denoted J224024.1−092748 or J2240 (geminiann12015a). After investigating the new object with the VLT, and confirming it with Gemini South, Schirmer and his team went on to observe several additional candidates with the Gemini telescope. These spectroscopic observations confirmed that another 16 candidates share the same characteristics …

19 November 2012: A group of British astronomers, led by Neale P. Gibson of the University of Oxford, used the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) to probe the atmosphere of a transiting extrasolar planet identified as WASP-29b. Previously, measurements of this sort were only possible from space, due to distortions from the Earth’s atmosphere. Now, thanks to advances in instrumentation and data processing, it is possible to perform these difficult observations using ground-based telescopes like Gemini. ESO’s Very Large Telescope was the first to attempt such observations and this work by Gibson et al. demonstrates the same extraordinary capability, and required instrumental stability, with GMOS on Gemini. The study of exoplanets is a rapidly advancing discipline with more than 800 planets detected beyond our solar system so far. The first of these were detected in 1988 and about 600 have been found in just the last decade. Another 2000 are expected to be revealed …

2 November 2012: Hawaii’s Mauna Kea and Chile’s Cerro Pachón host some of the world’s most powerful astronomical observatories - with capabilities found nowhere else. Now, with a new sharing agreement inked between the 8-meter Gemini and Subaru telescopes on these sites, astronomers from around the world have even more avenues to explore and understand our universe. The new time exchange agreement between Gemini and Subaru makes the entire suite of instrumentation available at each observatory open to any astronomer in the countries of the U.S., Japan, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. “Opening up our major research infrastructures to each other’s community sends a strong signal,” said Gemini Observatory Director Markus Kissler-Patig. “In a world in which communication is made easy, the future of science lies in the concept of crowdsourcing, where we share and distribute our brainpower and creativity globally,” said Kissler-Patig. “Both the Subaru and Gemini communities will profit immensely …

7 September 2012: Exploding stars (supernovae) offer the most precise measurements of large cosmic distances. Of these, when observed at near-infrared wavelengths, type Ia supernovae provide the greatest precision as “standard candles” for measuring cosmological distances. Observations of type Ia supernovae at optical wavelengths are frequently used for this purpose and are the basis for the research leading to the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics. These supernovae have intrinsically variable luminosities at optical wavelengths, however, so the luminosities must be standardized empirically. For example, this can be accomplished by using the relationship that supernovae which fade away more slowly are brighter. Optical light also suffers from the complication of attenuation by dust anywhere along the line of sight, from the supernova’s host galaxy to our vantage point in the Milky Way. To circumvent these difficulties, Rob Barone-Nugent (University of Melbourne, Australia) and colleagues show in a recent publication in the Monthly Notices of …

4 September 2012: From the 27th to the 31st of August, Gemini Observatory held their annual “Viaje al Universo”. The week long program brought astronomy into the classroom, with a wide variety of educational talks and workshops throughout schools in the Elqui Valley, La Serena and Coquimbo. The schools that participated this year were: Colegio Jerónimo Godoy from Pisco Elqui, Liceo Mistraliano from Paihuano, Colegio Claudio Arrau and Cardenal Caro from Coquimbo; Colegio San José, Saint Mary El Milagro, Christ School, Colegio Alemán, Sagrados Corazones and José Manuel Balmaceda from La Serena. With guidance from Gemini, the math and physics teachers and school principals worked over the course of a year on the proposal for this program. In addition to visiting the schools, experts from the US and Santiago led engaging rocket launching workshops throughout the week. Two talks were held on Wednesday the 29th at the Intendencia Regional. The first by Roderick …

28 August 2012: A research team led by University of Texas at Austin astronomy graduate student J.J. Hermes used the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea Hawai‘i to observe two white dwarf stars in a close gravitational embrace. Based on this work with Gemini and several other telescopes, Hermes and his team confirmed that the pair’s grip on each other is tightening very quickly. So quickly in fact, that the change in the pair’s period (slightly less than 13 minutes) is measurable (even over the tenure of a graduate student!) These measurements help confirm another ramification of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, which holds that the energy the pair loses in the shortened period is carried away in gravitational waves. The team’s paper, to be published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, finds that the pair’s period loses about 0.25 milliseconds per year, which is almost exactly what the General Theory of Relativity predicts. …

28 August 2012: The September 2012 NOAO Newsletter is online and ready to download. On the Cover May's Solar Eclipse and June's Venus Transit silhouette the telescopes on Kitt Peak.

30 July 2012: Today, Dr. Markus Kissler-Patig begins his tenure as the Gemini Observatory Director. This marks an important event for the Observatory and comes at a time when we are poised to deliver an exciting new suite of scientific capabilities to the community. I am confident that Markus will bring the necessary leadership, vision and innovative ideas to meet the challenges the observatory faces. I welcome Markus and look forward to implementing some of the innovative ideas he has for Gemini. I know the Observatory staff will give him their full support. I also thank Nancy Levenson for her strong leadership over the past several months as Interim Director. William S. Smith,AURA President

18 July 2012: The National Science Board has approved the LSST project, allowing the NSF Director to put the top ranked ground based initiative of the 2010 Decadal Survey in a future budget. See the NSF press release 12-137. NOAO is a founding member of the LSST collaboration working on the site, enclosure, and telescope that will be located at Cerro Pachón in Chile (shown above).

6 July 2012: High-resolution, mid-infrared observations at Gemini North and South have revealed a wide range of morphologies for low-luminosity active galactic nuclei (AGN). While the data present a broad characterization of these objects' properties in this spectral region, they also present an interesting puzzle to ponder. Active galactic nuclei (AGN), the supermassive black holes that feed on gas, dust, and stars at the centers of galaxies, spend most of their existence in a near dormant state. Until recently, astronomers had observed only a handful of low-luminosity AGN in the infrared at high resolution. Therefore, we didn't have a good, general overview of their properties in this potentially revealing spectral region. Our observations of 22 low-luminosity AGN, taken with both of Gemini's mid-infrared instruments (Michelle and T-ReCS), have changed this situation. The images reveal a wide range of morphologies, from galaxies dominated by a central, compact source (much like images of higher-luminosity Seyferts …

26 June 2012: This image was obtained with the wide-field view of the Mosaic II camera on the Blanco 4-meter telescope at Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory on January 12th and February 7th, 2012. An array of dark Bok globules, known as Thackeray’s Globules, can be seen in silhouette against the emission nebula IC 2944 in the constellation Centaurus. The image was generated with observations in the B (blue), I (orange) and Hydrogen-Alpha (yellow) filters. In this image, north is up, and east is to the left. This is one of the last observations completed with the Mosaic II camera before it was decommissioned.

7 June 2012: Venus transit June 5 2012.

4 May 2012: Left: Some last-minute tests are carried out on the new DECam prime focus cage as it stands under the disassembled Blanco 4-m telescope the night before it is installed. Right: With the Blanco 4-m telescope locked in a vertical position and the old prime focus cage removed, the new DECam prime focus cage is winched up to the top end to be installed. On May 3, 2012 the new prime focus cage for DECam was installed. The assembly (or “Camera”) includes the cage, hexapod, cabling, optics, and (for now) dummy imager.

27 April 2012: An international team uses Gemini to follow up on a rare transient X-ray source discovered by the Chandra X-ray Observatory in late 2010 within the nearby galaxy M83. Observations with the Gemini South telescope are the first to capture the object’s optical glow and initiate additional observations with the Hubble Space Telescope. From the Gemini/HST data a characterization emerges of a black hole with an unexpectedly low-mass, highly evolved giant companion, whose atmosphere is intermittently streaming material into an accretion disk feeding the black hole. Because of its relative closeness, face-on orientation, and enhanced level of star formation, spiral galaxy M83 is a favorite among astronomers - professional and amateur alike. M83 is also a prolific host to supernovae explosions (and their remnants), making it a frequent target for Gemini scientists. In April of 2011, Frank Winkler (Middlebury College) and Bill Blair (Johns Hopkins University) used Gemini South to make …

16 April 2012: Using NOAO facilities, astronomers from Lowell Observatory have acted as “stellar paparazzi”, managing to identify hundreds of rare yellow supergiants and their more long-lived descendants, the red supergiants, in two neighboring galaxies. These newly identified stellar populations provide an important constraint on the theoretical models which describe how these stars change from blue, to yellow and then to red. The behavior of the models in this phase can influence theoretical predictions, including what types of stars explode as supernova.

12 April 2012: The Gemini Science Meeting, a forum for users of the Gemini telescopes, is scheduled for July 17-20, 2012 in San Francisco California. Registration and abstract submission are currently available online here In addition, this url has all of the relevant details on this meeting for anyone planning to participate. The deadline for abstracts is April 27th and registration, June 8th. This meeting offers many opportunities for users (and potential users) of Gemini to provide input on future directions of the observatory – in order to better serve our user communities. This includes sessions on the future of high-resolution optical spectroscopy at Gemini and an opportunity for community participation in the long-range planning process for the observatory. Gemini’s new director, Markus Kissler-Patig will be attending and actively soliciting user input as he sets the course for Gemini’s future. We look forward to seeing you in the city by the bay in …

14 March 2012: Astronomers using the Gemini South telescope have discovered the first clear-cut example of a windy helium and nitrogen rich central star of a planetary nebula. This work provides the best evidence yet that there is another way to make hydrogen poor stars in the late-life stages of low mass stars - like the Sun. The international team, led by Brent Miszalski of the South African Astronomical Observatory and the Southern African Large Telescope, were searching for binary companions to central stars of planetary nebulae, when they stumbled across the rarest of stellar gems. Gemini observations of the nucleus of IC4663 (geminiann12005a) revealed a peculiar mix of helium and nitrogen emission lines, unique and entirely out of place for a planetary nebula, but nonetheless an apparent clone of high mass Wolf-Rayet stars. Planetary nebulae nuclei are the extremely hot, inert cores of low mass stars like the Sun, which are not …

8 March 2012: “All it takes is a spark at a young age to ignite the desire to reach for the stars…” Roberta Chu, Senior Vice President, Bank of Hawai‘i For community leaders like Roberta Chu, Gemini’s eighth annual Journey Through the Universe program is inspirational. Chu, who served as a community ambassador, helping scientists and engineers visiting local Hilo classrooms, adds, “…it’s inspiring to see our students instilled with the possibility of someday being a part of the world-class science taking place on Mauna Kea.” With almost 400 classroom visits, 8,000 students impacted, sold-out public events, educator workshops, and visiting educators and scientists from around the United States and the world, the 2012 version of Journey Through the Universe (“Journey”) has, “taken on a life of its own,” says Janice Harvey, Gemini’s local outreach team leader for the program. In addition to the numerous distinguished guests and lecturers at Journey 2012, Jeff …

4 March 2012: The March 2012 NOAO Newsletter is online and ready to download. This issue includes information pertaining to the 2012B Call for Proposals, which are due March 29th. On the Cover The Dark Energy Camera (DECam) is a liquid nitrogen cooled, 520-megapixel digital camera that is housed inside a high-vacuum Dewar; here, it poses in front of the CTIO Blanco 4-m telescope on which it will be mounted.