Gemini is happy to announce that it is accepting proposals for observing time in semester 2009A. The proposal deadline is September 30, 2008. A new version of the Phase I Tool (PIT) has been released to support proposal submissions.
The 2008B Observing Tool to support remaining 2008A observations and the start of semester 2008B is now available.
The allocations for successful Gemini 2008B observing programs have now been announced. Please check the 2008B schedules page for more information.
Starting on Tuesday, June 10 the Gemini Observatory observing databases will be upgraded in preparation for semester 2008B and so will not be accessible by the Observing Tool (OT) or the web report forms. The Gemini North update will be on Tuesday, June 10 and the Gemini South update will be on Thursday, June 12. After the updates ToO triggers will only be possible via the URL mechanism until the new OT is released. The 2008B OT will be available on Friday, June 13 and this will be needed for subsequent fetch/store operations. Please check this site for further announcements.
Gemini North welcomes poor weather proposals . Note that reliable guiding with the peripheral wave-front sensor (P2) at the optimum frequency requires a star brighter than R~13.5 in clear, dark skies, so in cloudy conditions we can observe only programs with R<11.5 guide-stars. For the GMOS OIWFS the same limit applies. For GMOS-N, only imaging or R400 and B600 spectroscopic programs will be considered.
A new version of the Gemini IRAF package (v1.14) has been released. This release provides support for the new GMOS-N Hamamatsu CCDs. This release is also the first new release done through the AstroConda distribution. For Ureka users, a tarball is available for manual installation of the package.
A new software package for GSAOI images, the Distortion Correction and Stacking Utility (Disco-Stu), is now available for download. This standalone package, written in python, will align and stack images that have already been processed by the Gemini IRAF gareduce task. The initial release is v1.3. Additional information and a download link can be found here.