While fantastic, it’s almost unfair to arrive
right at the time when the efforts of the previous directors (from Doug Simons, through
Fred Chaffee and lately Nancy Levenson) have
started to pay off, at a time when Gemini, with
the advent of the Gemini Multi-Conjugate
Adaptive Optics System (GeMS) and the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI), will offer unique facilities to its users.
Gemini is a more vibrant observatory than ever with
lots of opportunities to inject new ideas over the next
few years. It is owned by its community — so use these
favorable times to shape it to your needs!
— Markus Kissler-Patig
Gemini incoming Director
Challenges remain, of course. With the United
Kingdom leaving the partnership at the end
of 2012 (and the associated reduction in the
overall budget) the structure of the observatory and the services that it can deliver will
have to be modified. But times of change are
times of opportunities!
I was most pleased to see the new Gemini
Science and Technology Advisory Committee
(STAC) take off in November with such enthusiasm. It will provide most valuable input into
the future program of the observatory. I am
confident that the new Users’ Committee, to
be assembled over the summer, will play a
similar important role in energizing the observatory’s long-range plan.
What will this future look like? In the short
term, the observatory will continue its efforts to improve the reliability of its workhorse instruments, and to bring smoothly
into operations the instruments currently in
commissioning (FLAMINGOS-2 and GeMS/
Gemini South Adaptive Optics Imager) and
arriving (GPI). With the fiber-optics feed from
GRACES, we should be able to offer soon a
high spectral-resolution opportunity to the
Gemini community. With the Gemini High-
3
GeminiFocus
resolution Optical Spectrograph, to be kicked
off this year, we will consolidate the exploitation of this part of the parameter space. There
is also a window to soon launch the next instrument project, complementing a suite of 4
instruments + 1 AO system on each telescope,
taking us into the next decade.
That decade will be one of transition for the
8-meter-class telescopes. Facilities such as
the Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter
Array and the upcoming wide-field surveys
(with the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope
taking the lead) will challenge their monopoly in forefront ground-based astronomy.
The 8-m-class telescopes will have to exploit
these new opportunities and develop synergies between the facilities that will then play
a most important role.
Creativity and new ideas will be required to
realize and fully profit from another bright
decade for astronomy. The Gemini STAC already pointed to the importance of offering
to the Gemini community more flexibility in
proposing for observing time. Astronomers
will need large and/or long programs to allow
for a maximal impact in many research fields.
Rapid responses to discoveries will be a key.
I would like to quickly pick up both ideas. In
the near future, I wish to develop a scheme in
which Gemini users can apply across the partnership, and across semesters, for ambitious,
internationally competitive projects.
We could gain flexibility by developing a
scheme allowing for visitor instruments to
play a more prominent role; or by moving to a
more dynamic time allocation scheme.
As the observatory budget gets reduced, we
might also look at helping users to more efficiently support each other with their expertise in data reduction and analysis. Here also,
we need ideas (and if you have some, join our
Users’ Committee!).
I want to encourage the community to profit
a lot more from the opportunity to come and
June2012