Figure 3.
Gemini South’s first
light image from
GeMS/GSAOI shows
extreme detail in the
central part of the
globular star cluster
NGC 288. North is up,
East is right.
band), with a variation of only a few percent
across the whole field.
Since then, better performance levels have
been reached. We can achieve typical SR of
35 percent in H-band (full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) 50 milliarcsecond. Figure 3
=
represents the first compensated image with
GeMS and is truly the result of a large effort by
the GeMS and GSAOI teams.
After last year’s engineering winter shutdown,
GeMS came back on-sky in November 2011,
as originally planned. It was an almost brandnew GeMS, counting photons with a better
performing, and especially more stable, set
of subsystems. Commissioning resumed at a
rate of one week per month around the time
of full Moon. Since we obtained the first compensated images, the level of excitement has
been maintained at an extremely high level.
The next runs, in January and February 2012,
were dedicated to the commissioning of the
remaining functionalities, as well as the in-
29
GeminiFocus
tegration of GeMS and GSAOI within the observatory’s high-level software and telescope
control. Excellent progress has been made in
these areas and many others.
For instance, the Observing Tool (OT) has been
redesigned so it now includes an option to select the best asterisms to be used with GeMS.
It also provides users with an estimation of the
performance over the field. Check for the latest version of the OT at www.gemini.edu/sciops/observing-with-gemini?q=node/11161.
During the March run, and due to an issue
with the cooling of GSAOI, we tried to use
GeMS in conjunction with GMOS instead. Although this combination is not intended to
be offered as a standard mode in the immediate future, the configuration was useful for
commissioning/verification purposes, and it
demonstrated the capabilities of GeMS over
a broad spectral range.
To some extent, the GeMS/GMOS performance for this wavelength hints that the gain
June2012