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12 May 2010: A newly discovered gravitational lens in a relatively nearby galaxy cluster is leading astronomers to conclude that the cluster hosts the most massive galaxy known in our local universe. The study also reaffirms that galactic cannibalism is one reason that this galaxy is so obese, tipping the scales at up to 30 trillion times the mass of our Sun.

5 January 2010: Using the Gemini South telescope in Chile, astronomers at UCLA have found dusty evidence for the formation of young, rocky planets around a star some 500 light years distant. But these potential extrasolar worlds are alien in an even more intriguing way… In the aftermath of collisions between planetary embryos around this star the researchers discovered that the dusty debris bears no resemblance to the planetary building blocks of our own Solar System.

4 January 2010: Using adaptive optics to remove atmospheric blurring, Gemini Observatory released an image today showing previously hidden forensic secrets at the ballistic core of the Homunculus Nebula, part of the explosive Eta Carinae star system.

5 August 2009: Looking almost 11 billion years into the past, astronomers have measured the motions of stars for the first time in a very distant galaxy and clocked speeds upwards of one million miles per hour (about 1.6 million kilometers per hour), about twice the speed of our Sun through the Milky Way.

1 April 2009: On the nights of April 2-3 (3-4 UT) both Gemini telescopes participated in the “Around the World in 80 Telescopes” live, around the world control room webcast. Gemini was honored to be the first control room visit for the event when at 11:00 pm (HST) on April 2nd (9:00 am UT on April 3rd) Gemini presented a new video introduction to Gemini followed by a live visit to the Gemini North control room on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea hosted by Gemini’s Scott Fisher. Nineteen hours later, Gemini South participated in the event at Midnight (Chile time) on the night of April 3-4 (4:00 am UT on April 4th) when Gemini South astronomer Etienne Artigau hosted a visit to the Gemini South control room in Chile.

10 September 2008: Astronomers have been puzzling over the engine behind the historical 1843 outburst of Eta Carinae since it happened, but new observations with the Gemini South and the Blanco telescopes in Chile add a startling new clue.

26 June 2008: In what appears to be a masterful illusion, astronomers at Gemini Observatory have imaged two nearly identical spiral galaxies in Virgo, 90 million light years distant, in the early stages of a gentle gravitational embrace. The new image was obtained at the Gemini South telescope in Chile using GMOS, the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph.

2 April 2008: The well-known naked-eye star cluster Omega Centauri may be home to an elusive intermediate-mass black hole. Observations made using Gemini Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope provide convincing evidence that such black holes do exist and could even lead to an understanding of how they might evolve into larger supermassive black holes like the ones found at the cores of many galaxies.

8 January 2008: The Gemini South Multi-Object Spectograph (GMOS) recently captured a dramatic image of a vast cloud complex named DEM L316 located in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The peanut-shaped nebula appears to be a single object, but the latest research indicates that it is really comprised of two distinct gas and dust clouds formed by different types of supernova explosions.

30 May 2007: The coolest-known star-like object beyond the solar system is giving astronomers a new look at the differences between massive planets and the smallest brown dwarfs. This newly discovered object, called ULAS J0034-00 and located in the constellation Cetus, has a record-setting surface temperature of 600-700 K, cooler than any known solitary brown dwarf. In addition, it’s a relative lightweight, with an estimated mass of only 15-30 times that of Jupiter (although they both have about the same diameter).

4 April 2007: Astronomers have serendipitously discovered a record-breaking pair of low-mass objects with an extreme orbital separation. The petite objects, each of which has a mass less than 100 times that of Jupiter and could be either stars or brown dwarfs, are separated by more than 5,000 times the distance between the Sun and Earth – a value that breaks the previous record by a factor of three and leaves the duration of their future together uncertain.

8 January 2007: Astronomers have announced the discovery of huge quantities of an unusual variety of oxygen in two very rare types of stars. The finding suggests that the origin of these oddball stars may lie in the physics behind the mergers of white dwarf star pairs.

8 January 2007: Fundamental to theories describing active galactic nuclei (AGN) is the prediction that a doughnut-shaped ring of material (a torus) surrounds a supermassive black hole in these energetic galactic cores. Yet, understanding an AGN's torus, or indeed seeing one directly, has proved to be extremely frustrating, and has spurred an ongoing debate about their extent and physical properties.

5 January 2007: Google has joined a group of nineteen universities and national labs that are building the Large Synoptic
Survey Telescope (LSST).

4 June 2006: Two new images from Gemini Observatory released today at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Calgary, Canada, show a pair of beautiful nebulae that were created by two very different types of stars at what may be similar points in their evolutionary timelines. One is a rare type of very massive spectral-type "O" star surrounded by material it ejected in an explosive event earlier in its life. It continues to lose mass in a steady "stellar wind." The other is a star originally more similar to our Sun that has lost its outer envelope following a "red giant" phase. It continues to lose mass via a stellar wind as it dies, forming a planetary nebula. The images were made using the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) on Gemini South as part of the Gemini Legacy Imaging program.

3 May 2006: Using the Gemini South telescope in Chile, Australian astronomers have found a predicted "companion" star left behind when its partner exploded as a very unusual supernova. The presence of the companion explains why the supernova, which started off looking like one kind of exploding star, seemed to change its identity after a few weeks.

7 April 2006: A new Gemini Observatory image of NGC 246, nicknamed the "Skull Nebula," shows what can happen as the outer atmosphere of a fast-moving, dying star like the Sun (in several billion years) pushes through the complex soufflé of gas and dust that lies between the stars of our galaxy.

4 January 2006: A storm of billowing clouds blown by the winds from massive stars, and set aglow by their light, is the focus of a striking image released today by Gemini Observatory.

26 August 2005: The Gemini Observatory released a pair of images today that capture the dynamics of two very different interactions in space. One is a cold, dark dust cloud that resembles an ethereal-looking Chinese dragon. The other shows a distant duo of galaxies locked in a knot-like embrace that could portend the long-term future of our own Milky Way galaxy.

10 August 2005: Like archaeologists unearthing a 'lost city,' astronomers using the 8-meter Gemini South telescope have revealed that the galaxy NGC 300 has a large, faint extended disk made of ancient stars, enlarging the known diameter of the galaxy by a factor of two or more.