2022 Gemini Science Observations

The US National Gemini Office has created an animation of science observations obtained in 2022 at both Gemini telescopes, using metadata publicly available through the Gemini Observatory Archive API. The animation below shows the footprint of the 3139 unique targets in 2022 observed color-coded by telescope. The final map highlights the uniqueness of the international Gemini Observatory in covering both hemispheres and essentially accessing the entire night sky.

Science data were acquired by at least one Gemini telescope on 354 nights (97%). Two notable gaps in the observations relate to the scheduled and extended shutdowns (August 1 - 25 for Gemini South and starting October 10 for Gemini North) and science observations were performed on at least 20 nights per month at each telescope for most of the year. The figure below shows a breakdown of science observations in 2022. The majority of the on-target science time (78.5%) was spent observing the regular queue (Q), with Fast Turnaround (FT), Large and Long Programs (LP), and Director's Discretionary (DD) time combined for 21% of the time. The remaining programs were classical (C) and calibration (CAL). Most of the science data were acquired with GMOS-N/S (52% of the time, or 985 hours), followed by GRACES and the Near-IR instruments. For the two speckle imaging instruments, `Alopeke and Zorro, each frame counted by the Gemini Observatory Archive is a cube with one thousand or more images, so the real number of frames and exposure time are higher by at least a factor of 1000. The side panels show the RA and DEC distributions of the science targets. The coverage for right ascension is mostly complete, and there is a substantial overlap in declination close to the celestial equator.