The Gemini telescopes are twin 8.1-meter telescopes, one located in the southern hemisphere near La Serena in Chile and the other one in the northern hemisphere on Maunakea on the Big Island of Hawaii. They are operated by a partnership of five countries, with the main contribution coming from the US.
The Gemini South telescope in particular is well known for its innovative adaptive optics system GeMS, which, since 2011, has been the first Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics (MCAO) system using multiple laser guide stars. MCAO is a concept, in which the distortions are compensated by using not one, but a series of deformable mirrors and multiple guide stars. In effect, this provides compensation in three dimensions versus the two dimensions for classical AO systems. The impact on data is that there is a ten-fold increase in the size of the corrected field of view and significantly more uniform corrections across the entire field than classical AO.
Since 2018, there is an NSF-funded project for also bringing the Gemini North adaptive optics system to the next level. The GNAO system will provide a multi-conjugate adaptive optics system with four laser beacons generated out of two SodiumStar 20/2 laser systems.
Credit: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA
