AAS 245

Gemini Observatory staff will be at the 245th meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), hosted in Maryland from 12 – 16 January 2025.  We'd like to encourage anyone who would like help with their Gemini program to stop by our table at the NOIRLab booth. There are several demos about "reduce Gemini imaging data with DRAGONS" and "GHOST spectroscopy data Reduction". For more information about the demo schedule and other NOIRLab activities, visit the related NOIRLab page.

Gemini and the US National Gemini Office will also be hosting one splinter session on Thursday, January 16th: "A conversation about the Gemini Observatory Strategic Plan for the 2030s".

Special Sessions

Agenda:

Abstracts:

Jessica Lu
Black Holes and the Adaptive Optics Tech to Find Them
Our understanding of stellar mass and intermediate mass black holes is advancing rapidly thanks to gravitational wave (GW) observatories. However, the GW population resides in distant galaxies with unknown populations and all the BHs are in binaries. We must find ways to find and study BHs in isolation and in binaries and closer to home through techniques such as gravitational lensing and astrometric and radial velocity wobble. I will discuss the landscape of adaptive optics technologies and systems needed to find and study stellar and intermediate mass black holes.

Néstor Espinoza
The Exoplanet Frontier: Opportunities for Gemini in the era of next-generation exoplanet missions
The field of exoplanetary science has seen an explosion in the past few decades on the discovery and characterization of new worlds. The current landscape for new facilities both in space and the ground planned for the next two decades already points to this explosion only getting bigger. In this talk, I will review some key opportunities ground-based facilities such as the ones under the Gemini Observatory umbrella could take advantage of to push the limits of exoplanet discovery and characterization. This includes critical work to confirm exoplanets from existing (e.g., TESS) and upcoming (e.g., Roman, PLATO) space-based missions via high-resolution imaging and precision radial-velocity follow-up, as well as unique opportunities on exoplanet atmospheric characterization at optical and near-IR wavelengths that are difficult to obtain from existing (e.g., HST, JWST) and to-be-launched (e.g., ARIEL) space-based observatories via both high and low-resolution exoplanet spectroscopy.

Sebastian Gomez
Transient Follow-up in the Era of Big Data
The upcoming era of large time-domain surveys, led by missions such as the Vera C. Rubin Observatory and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, will revolutionize transient astronomy by increasing the discovery rate of transients by about two orders of magnitude. This unprecedented influx of data presents a critical challenge: identifying and prioritizing the most scientifically valuable transients for follow-up using facilities such as JWST or Gemini. Advanced target selection techniques, driven by machine learning, are becoming essential tools to handle these large amounts of data. These methods will enable efficient classification, prioritization, and allocation of telescope time, ensuring that we maximize the scientific return from the next generation of astronomical surveys and instruments.

Bill Vacca
Current Status and Future Development of Data Reduction Software at Gemini
I will summarize the current status, and future development, of various software projects led by the Science User Support Department at Gemini. 
These projects include DRAGONS (the data reduction pipeline system), GOATS (a web interface linking alert brokers with Gemini software tools), and IRAF. 

Vinicius Placco
GHOSTDR: Offering Reduced Spectra to the Gemini Community and Beyond
The US National Gemini Office, in collaboration with the Science User Support Department (SUSD) and the GHOST instrument team at Gemini, is leading a project to provide reduced spectra to PIs of GHOST programs (Q, PW, DD, FT, and LP) from all Gemini partner countries, starting in the 2024A semester. The goals include: (i) encouraging PIs to inspect their data without having to install any software or run a data reduction pipeline; (ii) in some cases, providing “science-ready” data, which can expedite analysis and publication; (iii) increasing trust within the community regarding Gemini’s data reduction software and archive; and (iv) establishing a legacy value for the archive by providing high-quality reduced spectra for the community once proprietary periods expire. In this talk, I'll present an update on the current status of this effort.

Talks

iPosters

Your contribution presents Gemini related work and it is not listed here? Please send details to siyi.xu@noirlab.edu