Institute for Advanced Study / Princeton University Joint Astrophysics Colloquium
Gemini Observatory in the 2020's
For two decades, the international Gemini Observatory has powered astronomical discovery for the entire U.S. community and the international Gemini partnership. Gemini’s twin 8.1m optical/infrared telescopes provide nightly access to both hemispheres of the sky, and host a wide suite of imaging, spectroscopic, and adaptive optics capabilities. Gemini Observatory is one of the world’s most flexible and agile 8 m class observatories, enabled by remote nightly queue operations, instrument swapping on timescale of minutes, and responsive scheduling of observations.
In the next decade, Gemini seeks to provide transformational capabilities to fuel discovery in the fields of planetary systems, compact objects, cosmology, and galaxy assembly. Gemini is undergoing a major revitalization of its instrumentation suite, AO facilities, and user support infrastructure. With the advent of Rubin Observatory and LSST, Gemini is well-posed to lead the follow-up of the time-varying sky, and is developing the capabilities to ensure success in the time domain while preserving access for static universe studies.