 providing uniform corrections over the entire field. "This is huge when it's time for astronomers to reduce their data," said Adam Ginsburg a graduate student working with John Bally at the University of Colorado who originally proposed that the GeMS system revisit the Orion bullets. "If the corrections are not uniform across the entire field it is difficult, and sometimes impossible, for researchers to compare one part of a dataset with another and errors proliferate," said Ginsbrug. Bally adds that MCAO should make this problem a non-issue.
GeMS, in conjunction with the Gemini South Adaptive Optics Imager (GSAOI), is undergoing commissioning and has obtained some early System Verification data. About 80 hours have been offered for the first semester of 2013, and more will be available in the second semester, for astronomers in the international partnership through the standard Gemini proposal process.
THE ORION BULLETS
Discovered in 1983, the Orion Bullets are clumps of gas ejected from deep within the Orion Nebula - located some 1500 light-years from our Solar System. The violence causing this is likely related to the recent formation of a cluster of massive stars with strong winds that can expel gas at supersonic speeds. The bullets (seen as distinctive blue features in the new Gemini image) are actually quite large, about 10 times the size of Pluto's orbit around the Sun.
As the bullets speed outward, they leave behind distinctive tubular and cone-shaped wakes, which shine like tracers due to the bullets heating of the molecular hydrogen gas in the Orion Nebula. The wakes span much greater distances than the bullets, measuring as much as a fifth of a light-year in length. As Gemini first observed with Altair, the fingerlike wakes also resolve into filaments which are clearly resolved in the new Gemini GeMS image.