By Eric Steinbring (Canadian Gemini Office, NRC Herzberg Astronomy & Astrophysics Research Centre)
(Cassiopeia – Summer / 2023)
Gemini-North and New Telescope Status Pages
The G-North primary has been repaired and recoated, and now the telescope is back on sky doing science! Regular queue operations commenced the week of 5 June. And just in time for that, a new public webpage is available to provide up-to-the minute status of all available instruments (say, which GMOS gratings are currently available) and the weather in Hawai’i, the current forecast, and latest from the Maunakea seeing monitor (that is, collecting on one page the same information observers use in operating the queue). See here, and similarly for the South, with status on Cerro Pachon. Together these new status pages could be useful, for example, in time-domain observations and deciding whether, say, tonight is a good night to trigger on a Target of Opportunity – and from which telescope.
Hot New Results from MAROON-X
The G-North visitor instrument MAROON-X provides stable, very high-resolution optical spectroscopy, which has allowed investigation into the atmosphere of the super-hot exoplanet WASP-76b: a “puffed-up” gas-giant that orbits about 12 times closer than Mercury is to the Sun. A team led by Stefan Pelletier at the Université de Montréal found, by capturing it in eclipse, that this planet has an atmosphere containing rock-forming elements: sodium, potassium, lithium, nickel, manganese, chromium, magnesium, vanadium, barium, calcium, and iron. These would all be in the form of rocks on Earth, but are vapourized in this atmosphere of 2000 Celsius. And excitingly, it is also the first-ever unambiguous detection of vanadium oxide on an exoplanet, a molecule acting something like how ozone does on Earth. The NOIRLab press release and link to the paper in Nature is available here.
Update on GHOST
The Gemini High Resolution Optical SpecTrograph is the newest facility instrument at G-South, for echelle spectroscopy in either two-object standard-resolution (R~55,000) mode or single-object, high-resolution (R~80,0000) mode. It underwent a successful System Verification phase in April/May, with data now publicly available. Already science results are coming out, with the first paper submitted by the team led by Herzberg Fellow Christian Hayes: “Identifying a new chemically peculiar star in Reticulum II”, also reported on at CASCA in Penticton. Check out the SV webpage for more information. Note that there will be a Special Call for GHOST time, as a shared-risk opportunity, to come by early September. The GHOST SV webpage will be your portal for that announcement, and all the details, so keep checking back there for the latest news.
Fast Turnaround
Two things are special about this month’s Call for FT proposals: First, as mentioned above, Gemini-North is back, and will be fully available for requests of FT programs once again. And second, just about half the usual time for Gemini-South FT programs is not, being held for the Special Call for shared-risk GHOST proposals; that’s to come in the November through January cycle. All the resources of G-North are available for some part of this cycle, including Altair, GMOS-N, GNIRS, NIFS, NIRI, MAROON-X, GRACES and Alopeke; and similar for G-South, including GMOS-S, F2 (even with MOS), IGRINS and Zorro. GMOS-S will not be available in July, as its bad detector is being swapped out. Otherwise, this is just the usual reminder, like every month, to consider applying for a Fast Turnaround program: maybe it’s a new idea you’ve had that you can’t wait to test out, or you need only a little data to complete a program, or something else that needn’t wait for the full-blown regular semester Call. This is a way to get those data in hand quickly.