It’s Official, GIRMOS has a Logo

The Gemini InfraRed Multi-Object Spectrograph (GIRMOS) is a powerful new instrument being designed and built for the Gemini North telescope by a consortium of Canadian Universities including U. Toronto, Dalhousie, Laval, Saint Mary's, UBC, U. Victoria, York, and U. Manitoba, as well as NRC-HAA. This instrument will overcome a key limitation in existing adaptive optics (AO) facilities; where existing integral field spectrographs are designed to observe only single objects with adequate atmospheric correction, GIRMOS is being designed to have the ability to observe multiple sources simultaneously with high spatial resolution while obtaining spectra at the same time. (For more info, see Sivanandam et al., Proceedings of the SPIE, 2018). GIRMOS is still in the early stages of development, and the team, led by Principal Investigator Suresh Sivanandam (University of Toronto, Dunlap Institute) and Project Engineer Darren Erickson (HAA), just passed their conceptual design review last September. Now they have achieved another important milestone – the selection of a logo!

The logo shown below received the most votes in a logo design contest sponsored by the PI. The contest, open to all GIRMOS and Gemini staff, received a number of really outstanding submissions. The chosen logo was designed by talented artist and research associate Anne-Sophie Poulin-Girard at Laval University who will not only win bragging rights for this attractive design, but will also receive a gift card. In addition, the brave PI, Suresh, has volunteered to get a black and white tattoo of the logo on his arm!