Common menu bar links
Related Information
Institutes & Programs
Areas of Research
Communities
Careers
News
Events
Contact
Stéphanie Côté
Phone: 250-363-0026
Fax: 250-363-0045
Email: Stephanie.Cote@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca
Gemini Observatory
Gemini is a powerful optical-infrared astronomical facility with two 8-metre telescopes aimed at exploring the universe with unprecedented opportunities.
The two telescopes are located on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, and Cerro Pachón, Chile and are an international partnership between seven countries: United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Chile, Australia, Argentina, and Brazil.
With the Gemini Observatory, Canadian astronomers and their colleagues in the other Gemini partner countries have in hand a superb and powerful tool to explore the universe from the nearest planets and stars to the most distant galaxies. The two giant telescopes are being used to monitor young Jupiter-like planets orbiting nearby stars, to probe the earliest stages of star formation in obscure interstellar clouds, and to study the light of young galaxies, which has traveled through space for billions of years.
The Gemini telescopes are a magnificent achievement of modern technology. Every component of these large, but ultra-lightweight machines is under accurate computer monitoring and control. A complex servo-loop control and feedback system ensures that minute flexures, vibrations and thermal distortion of the whole telescope system are continuously corrected, so that the telescopes will deliver the finest images obtainable from the ground.
In choosing a location for a ground-based telescope, one seeks geographical sites with best year-round atmospheric conditions and the widest possible view of the sky. Gemini achieves full sky coverage by placing an 8-metre telescope in the Northern and Southern hemispheres. The northern telescope is located on Mauna Kea on the island of Hawaii, while the southern telescope is located on Cerro Pachón in Chile. When combined, these two sites provide an unrestrained view of the whole sky, so that key astronomical objects, such as the centre of our Milky Way, our small satellite galaxies, the Magellanic Clouds, and the large nearby Andromeda galaxy at 2.2 million light-years, are fully accessible to Gemini cameras and spectrographs.
Related Information
Read more about Gemini Observatory:
Contest for One Hour of Gemini Imaging Time for High School Students in Canada
Gemini Tier-1 Support Assignments
The Owl Nebula: Two Eyes or One
