GIRMOS Team Visits Gemini South

 GIRMOS team leaders Suresh Sivanandam (left; Dunlap Institute, Univiversity of Toronto) and Darren Erickson (right; National Research Council Canada) learn about GeMS operations on Cerro Pachón from Gemini staff members Gaetano Sivo and Eduardo Marin.

The Gemini InfraRed Multi-Object Spectrograph (GIRMOS) is a visiting instrument being designed to observe multiple sources simultaneously at high angular resolution while simultaneously obtaining spectra (Sivanandam et al., Proc. SPIE, 2018). It accomplishes this by exploiting the adaptive optics (AO) correction from both a telescope-based AO system (either the Gemini Multi-conjugate adaptive optics System, GeMS, or the prospective Gemini North AO system) and its own additional Multiple Object Adaptive Optics system that feeds four 1 to 2.4 micron integral field spectrographs (R ~ 3,000 and 8,000) that can each observe an object independently within a two arcminute field of view.

In order to fully utilize the Gemini AO system, GIRMOS needs to be more integrated to the telescope than most visiting instruments, and so engineering and science teams from both sides have been working together extensively to make this possible. In January, GIRMOS Principal Investigator Suresh Sivanandam and Principal Engineer Darren Erickson came to Gemini South to work with the experts who perform observations using GeMS. They spent a few days at the base facility discussing design details and planning, and one night at the telescope on Cerro Pachón participating in a hands-on tour of Gemini’s AO system and operations. The night was very successful and productive and we are looking forward to bringing this exciting instrument to fruition. The GIRMOS Conceptual Design Review is slated for later this year, with continued Gemini staff participation.