Speckle Imaging is Here to Stay at Gemini!

The ʻAlopeke team (left to right: Rachel Matson, Steve Howell, Nic Scott, and Emmett Quigley) mounting ʻAlopeke onto the Gemini North telescope.

ʻAlopeke, a new high-resolution camera for Gemini North, completed its first commissioning run in late October. During the run it performed as expected, despite minor challenges including: difficult mounting between GCAL and the instrument cube, issues with the fold mirror, an out of focus red channel, and an interrupted run due to Target of Opportunity observations.
 
Despite these challenges, ʻAlopeke produced proper high resolution images in both “speckle” mode (a small 9X9 arcsecond field of view) and “wide-field” mode (nearly an arcminute wide). ʻAlopeke, a contemporary Hawaiian word meaning fox, is indeed small, fast, and clever. We anticipate high-usage for superb imaging, speckle interferometry, and technical diagnostics. The ʻAlopeke team plans to finish commissioning in mid-December for use at Gemini North during the 2018A semester.