Announcements

12 April 2004: A team of Brazilian and French astronomers led by C. Mendes de Oliveira has discovered four surprisingly metal-rich HII regions and associated clusters of hot young stars in an otherwise empty region of intergalactic space near the galaxy group called Stephan's Quintet. This collection of interacting galaxies (which lies about 280 million light-years away from us) is spreading clouds of gas and newborn stars across space. The newly discovered HII regions lie more than 80,000 light-years away from the center of action. Their relative youth and lack of apparent connection to the star-forming regions in the nearby quintet of galaxies raise questions about the sequence of events leading to their formation. A team of Brazilian and French astronomers led by C. Mendes de Oliveira has discovered four surprisingly metal-rich HII regions and associated clusters of hot young stars in an otherwise empty region of intergalactic space near the galaxy group …

22 March 2004: This superb new image of a stellar nursery in the Large Magellanic Cloud named Henize 206 combines data from the Spitzer Space Telescope with visible imaging from the University of Michigan/CTIO Heber D. Curtis Schmidt telescope at NOAO’s Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile as part of the Magellanic Cloud Emission Line Survey (C. Smith, et. al.).

11 March 2004: As GNIRS nears first-science, NOAO is keen to see the powerful capabilities of GNIRS exploited for major scientific initiatives. Hence, NOAO is conducting a pilot program to enable observations with high scientific potential that require significant blocks of time with GNIRS on Gemini South (15 to 20 nights over the next two to three years). Find out more at the GNIRS Key Science Opportunity Webcast, Tuesday, March 16 at 10:00am MST.

8 March 2004: The GLARE (Gemini Lyman Alpha at Reionisation Era) team, an international group of astronomers using Gemini to study the early universe, has just discovered a surprisingly large number (three) very high redshift galaxies ( z = 5.83, 5.79 and 5.94) in a same region of the southern GOODS field. Two of the Lyman alpha emitters measured are the faintest of any previous spectroscopic study. The objects are red (i' - z') > 1.3 and the faintest one has a z' magnitude of 27.15. This finding suggests the existence of large-scale structure at this redshift. This field is very close to the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (UDF), a small portion of sky in the southern hemisphere recently imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope. The UDF is the deepest imaging ever done of a region in the sky. The completed survey and the images are being released by the Space Telescope Science Institute. …

3 March 2004: The March 2004 edition of the Newsletter features news about the Adaptive Optics Development Program, progress reports from the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope and the AURA New Initiatives Office, and information on preparing observing proposals for 2004B.

25 February 2004: A Canadian/Gemini team led by Tim Davidge (Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics) used the ALTAIR adaptive optics system with the Near Infrared Imager (NIRI) on the Frederick C. Gillett Gemini North Telescope to probe the red stellar content in the starburst galaxy M-82. The field studied is at a projected distance of 1 kiloparsec above the disk plane of the galaxy. This amorphous, nearly edge-on galaxy is the third brightest member of a nearby collection of galaxies called the M-81 group which is located about 12 million light-years from our Galaxy. The interactions of galaxies in the M-81 group spur bursts of star formation in its members and M-82 appears to now be experiencing such a violent outburst. This activity in the disk of M-82 appears to drive a bipolar galactic wind that feeds gas to the outer regions of the galaxy. This work indicates that recent star formation in M-82 …

2 February 2004: Wide-field telescope observations from the CTIO Blanco 4-meter telescope of the remote and therefore early Universe, looking back to a time when it was a fifth of its present age (redshift = 2.38), have revealed an enormous string of galaxies about 300 million light-years long. This new structure defies current models of how the Universe evolved, which can’t explain how a string this big could have formed so early.

21 January 2004: Trailing 200,000-light-year-long streamers of seething gas, a galaxy that was once like our Milky Way is being shredded as it plunges at 4.5 million miles per hour through the heart of a distant cluster of galaxies. These findings use data from the Mayall 4-meter and Gemini Telescopes.

14 January 2004: The mirror for the SOAR 4-meter telescope arrived safely on Cerro Pachón in Chile on the afternoon of 9 January 2004 to the great excitement of the SOAR project team, who will now prepare the optics system for first light. Dedication of the telescope is planned for mid-April.

5 January 2004: Why are some galaxies brighter than others? Bright galaxies where stars are forming may outshine dimmer, more massive galaxies. In all previous surveys of the “Redshift Desert,” the brighter star-forming galaxies were the only type bright enough to be sampled. The Gemini Deep Deep Survey (GDDS) was able to sample the dimmer, more massive galaxies and provide a better representation of the galaxies at this epoch of the Universe. The GDDS results revealed that there is a greater abundance of these more massive and older galaxies than expected from current models when the Universe was only 20-40% of its current age.

23 December 2003: The staff of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory wishes you all the best this holiday season.

9 December 2003: The Gemini Near-InfraRed Spectrograph, designed and built by NOAO, has been mounted on the Gemini South telescope in Chile. This multi-million dollar, long-slit spectrometer will help astronomers make measurements of the chemical abundances of stars in other galaxies, the conditions at the centers of other galaxies (including very distant young objects) and the initial mass functions for very young star clusters.

3 December 2003: There are six research assistant positions available for the summer of 2004. As part of their research activities, REU students gain first-hand experience with KPNO’s state-of-the-art telescopes and develop expertise in astronomical data reduction and analysis. Applications are due January 26, 2004.

2 December 2003: Verne Smith of the University of Texas El Paso led an international team of American, Canadian, Brazilian and Japanese astronomers to a detailed study of the physical properties of the recently discovered nearby brown dwarf companion to Epsilon Indi, the fifth brightest star of the southern hemisphere constellation Indus. This T-dwarf star was discovered at Gemini South by Kevin Volk et al (2003) to be a close optical double consisting of an early T dwarf (Epsilon Indi Ba) and a late T dwarf (Epsilon Indi Bb) separated by 0.6 arcsec - see previous announcement, "Gemini Detects Something "Cool" in Our Neighborhood". With an accurately known distance of 3.626 +/- 0.009 pc, Epsilon Indi Ba and Bb are the nearest known brown dwarfs. High-resolution infrared (IR) spectra were obtained on Epsilon Indi Ba using the Gemini South Telescope and the NOAO PHOENIX spectrometer. The properties of Epsilon Indi Ba were explored …

19 November 2003: The prototype of the Gemini Science Archive (GSAp), shown in the picture below, was recently released to the astronomical community and the general public. This is a significant event in Gemini's maturation since it adds an end-point to the development sequence of high-level software systems. Now a Gemini user can seamlessly move from the application process via the Phase I Tool (the PIT), to observation definition using the Observing Tool (the OT), to observation execution using the Observatory Control System (the OCS), through data handling and storage (via the DHS), and finally into a permanent data archive (via the GSA). The release of the GSAp is an auspicious event and marks the first availability of Gemini science data to not just a project's principal investigator (PI) but to anyone who wants to make use of it. Many ground-based observatories and all space-based telescopes have previously developed data archives (for example, …

5 November 2003: The remnants of a Type 1a Supernova that first appeared in 1572, as imaged by Kitt Peak Visitors Center telescope as part of the Advanced Observing Program.

4 November 2003: November 4, 2003 A group of astronomers has recently studied the chemical make-up of distant galaxies in the "redshift desert," which is a virtually unexplored region of space between eight billion and ten billion light years away. Because the light from these galaxies moves at a finite speed, the galaxies are being seen when the Universe was between 20% and 40% of its present age. Studying the properties of galaxies at this particular time is important because it corresponds to a special age in the history of the Universe - a time during which it is thought to have made most of its stars. These observations were undertaken using the Gemini North telescope and a uniquely capable instrument, the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS), which is able to target extraordinarily faint galaxies using a newly developed technique known as "nod and shuffle." This work is reported in "The Gemini Deep Deep …

29 October 2003: ...Is a message that the StarTeachers successfully delivered to thousands of students in Chile and Hawai`i. The second-half of the inspiring StarTeachers program began on Saturday, October 11, in Waikoloa, Hawai`i, with a welcoming gala. During the gala, Gemini was honored to receive the Gabriela Mistral Medal for excellence in education from the Chilean Ministry of Education. The gala event kicked-off two weeks of teaching and cultural exchange. The StarTeachers have been busy on the Big Island. More images are provided in the StarTeacher's Photo Album. Additional information about the individual teachers and background information on the StarTeachers program is also available at our website. The StarTeachers spent most of their time in schools and classrooms in East Hawaii infusing students and other educators with their love of science, astronomy and culture. They visited 9 schools total with focused efforts at the Hawaiian StarTeachers' home schools - Keaau High School, …

24 October 2003: NOAO has completed construction and testing of the Gemini Near Infrared Spectrograph (GNIRS). The instrument left Tucson on October 24 on its way to be mounted on the Gemini South telescope on Cerro Pachón in Chile, where it arrived on October 27 (see bottom image). This multi-million dollar, long-slit spectrometer will help astronomers make measurements of the chemical abundances of stars in other galaxies, the conditions at the centers of other galaxies (including very distant young objects) and the initial mass functions for very young star clusters.

22 October 2003: The Gemini Observatory recently reached an important milestone - successful coating of the secondary mirror on Gemini South with silver. Previously, with aluminum coatings on both primary and secondary mirrors, Gemini's combined emissivity was 3.8%. Reaching this new milestone, we are increasingly confident that achieving our ambitious goal of 2% total telescope emissivity is attainable. Reflectivity and emissivity are two measures of a mirror's performance. A highly reflective mirror is desirable in any optical telescope in order to maximize the amount of light reaching the science instrument. Ideally, a coating should reflect as close to 100% of the light that strikes it. In the thermal infrared region of the spectrum, however, a mirror coating emits a great deal of infrared radiation, and the statistical "noisiness" of this emission reduces an infrared instrument's sensitivity to emission from astronomical sources. The emissivity of an optical surface is defined as the ratio between …