are developed; readers may also be interested in the recent SPIE proceedings describing
the design of the plan (available here).
See update (page 36).
GHOST
In April 2014, the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy delivered to
the Sydney-based Australian Astronomical
Observatory (AAO) a signed contract for the
design, building, testing, and commissioning of the Gemini High-resolution Optical
SpecTrograph (GHOST, previously referred to
as GHOS) — for use on the twin 8-meter telescopes. AAO will have two partners on the
project: the National Research Council Herzberg in Victoria, Canada, which will be designing and building the spectrograph portion of GHOST; and the Australian National
University Research School of Astronomy
and Astrophysics in Canberra, which will be
developing the instrument’s software.
Rounding out the project team roster are
Gemini Operations and Development team
members from both the north and south
sites. They will work closely with their Australian and Canadian counterparts to ensure
a smooth transition of this new instrument
into Gemini operations.
Work on the project’s Preliminary Design
stage has been proceeding for the past couple of months. Last May, instrument technicians, engineers, and scientists gathered in
Sydney, Australia, where they spent three
days making significant progress. With an
end of year 2014 goal to have the preliminary design ready for review, and a 3rd-quarter 2017 goal to be commissioning this new
fiber-fed, bench-mounted spectrograph, the
GHOST project team is on its way to providing this long-awaited capability to the Gemini community.
See updates (pages 45 and 46).
January 2015
Gemini Generation-4
Instrument #3 Project
Figure 5.
With development of the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) ramping down as the instrument’s
commissioning nears completion, work
on Gemini’s next new instrument (called
Gen4#3 for the third, 4th-generation instrument) is advancing.
The plan is to approach this new instrument
as two distinctly different projects. First, we
will solicit an open call for feasibility studies, which we expect to launch early in the
fourth quarter of 2014. The goal of these
funded, science-driven studies is to provide
feasible concepts for an instrument consistent with the guidelines set by our Science
and Technology Advisory Committee (STAC).
Science operations
specialist Erich
Wenderoth (left), and
systems engineer
Andrew Serio (right),
open the dome of the
Gemini South telescope
remotely from the La
Serena Base Facility,
without the assistance
of an operator at Cerro
Pachón. This milestone
is part of the Base
Facility Operations (BFO)
project targeted to allow
full remote operations,
by the first half of 2016.
Once we have reviewed these studies with
our community, the creation of two or more
sets of specific instrument requirements will
commence, allowing us to pursue the second project. Subsequently, we will issue a
request for proposals for teams to bid and
agree to contracts for the remainder of the
work. We expect to then choose two teams,
one for each instrument concept, with
whom we will negotiate a contract for the
remainder of the work.
We intend for this contract to include both
the remaining design stages as well as the
2014 Year in Review
GeminiFocus
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