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1 Director's Message 1 Director’s Message Markus Kissler-Patig 3 Weighing the Black Hole in M101 ULX-1 Stephen Justham and Jifeng Liu 8 World’s Most Powerful Planet Finder Turns its Eye to the Sky: First Light with the Gemini Planet Imager Bruce Macintosh and Peter Michaud 12 Science Highlights Nancy A. Levenson 15 Operations Corner: Update and 2013 Review Andy Adamson 20 Instrumentation Development: Update and 2013 Review Scot Kleinman ON THE COVER: GeminiFocus January 2014 The cover of this issue GeminiFocus is a quarterly publication of Gemini Observatory features first light images from the Gemini 670 N. A‘ohoku Place, Hilo, Hawai‘i 96720 USA Planet Imager that Phone: (808) 974-2500 Fax: (808) 974-2589 were released at the Online viewing address: January 2014 meeting www.gemini.edu/geminifocus of the American Managing Editor: Peter Michaud Astronomical Society Science Editor: Nancy A. Levenson held in Washington, D.C. Associate Editor: Stephen James O’Meara See the press release Designer: Eve Furchgott / Blue Heron Multimedia that accompanied the images starting on Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations page 8 of this issue. expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. Markus Kissler-Patig Director’s Message 2013: A Successful Year for Gemini! As 2013 comes to an end, we can look back at 12 very successful months for Gemini despite strong budget constraints. Indeed, 2013 was the first stage of our three-year transition to a reduced opera- tions budget, and it was marked by a roughly 20 percent cut in contributions from Gemini’s partner countries. Nevertheless, our staff excelled at working on the many initiatives that will allow us to oper- ate Gemini in a sustainable way, while providing most of the services that our users appreciate. We also managed to deliver to the Gemini community three new exciting instruments at Gemini South, as well as host two visiting instruments at Gemini North. In addition, we launched the new Large and Long Programs, complementing the standard semester-based method of administering telescope time. Gains at Gemini South With four facility-class instruments and an adaptive optics system, Gemini South is now configured as it will operate for the next few years. First, the Gemini Multi-conjugate adaptive optics System (GeMS) with the Gemini South Adaptive Optics Imager (GSAOI) was introduced early in the year with first sci- ence. The system moved into regular operations soon thereafter. This complex system will still require a few more semesters of operations until it runs as smoothly as some of the old workhorse instru- ments, but the first papers based on its data have appeared, and the instrument is heavily subscribed. Second, FLAMINGOS-2 was commissioned in imaging- and long-slit modes during the first half of the year. It jumped immediately to the next-most demanded instrument behind the two Gemini Multi- Object Spectrographs. We anticipate that the remaining image-quality problems can be solved in 2014, after which we will add the much anticipated near-infrared Multi-Object Spectrograph mode. Finally, the Gemini Planet Imager made a flamboyant entry with its integration of first light in Novem- ber (see article on page 8 of this issue)! January2014 GeminiFocus 1 Gemini North News Large and Long programs have received the go-ahead from the Gemini Board, and the first At Gemini North, we took routine operations to call went out in December. This scheme also a high level — dedicating close to 95 percent of led us to introduce “Priority Visiting Observing” 2013 to science observations. Also, we were able — a way to observe classically while mitigating and happy to host two visiting instruments: the the risk of weather loss. Check it out at: http:// Differential Speckle Survey Instrument (Steven www.gemini.edu/node/11101?q=node/12096. Howell, Principal Investigator (PI)) and the Texas The Fast Turnaround scheme has been re- Echelon Cross Echelle Spectrograph (John Lacy, viewed by our advisory committees and is now PI). Both instruments have unique capabilities being prototyped. We hope to introduce it by that enhance Gemini’s complement of facility- the end of 2014. class instruments. Beyond being used for the PI’s dedicated programs, both visiting instruments We also recognized that more “post-observing” were offered to the user community while being support would be very beneficial to the user operated by the PI‘s teams. In the coming years, community. While in-house efforts are being we are looking forward to more groups bringing spent, we also wanted to engage our users their instruments or experiments to our state- in supporting each other. As a result, we are of-the-art telescopes! launching a new Data Reduction User Forum at: http://drforum.gemini.edu. Please add to the Operations Decisions discussion — the best contributions will be re- Driven by budget cuts, we reviewed the core warded with Director Discretionary Time! Observatory operations. We reflected on how Overall, during 2013 we saw many advances our users’ science could direct the way in which in our support of the community, with original we operate, rather than having our operations ideas that contribute to Gemini’s uniqueness. constrain the users’ science. This concept gen- Our outlook for 2014 promises to be no less erated many ideas. In particular, it led us to exciting. We are looking forward to many new consider adding two future proposal modes: discoveries by our community in the new year. 1) Large and Long programs that enable multi- year, high-impact ambitious projects; and 2) a Fast Turnaround proposal scheme, allowing us- Markus Kissler-Patig is Gemini’s Director. He can ers to obtain data only a few weeks after submit- be reached at: [email protected] ting their proposals. 2 GeminiFocus January2014 Stephen Justham and Jifeng Liu Weighing the Black Hole in M101 ULX-1 Astronomers have measured the mass of an ultra-luminous X-ray source, producing a puzzle over how to explain the observed X-ray properties and leaving a hole in the quest for intermediate-mass black holes. M101 ULX-1 is a transient ultra-luminous X- Figure 1. ray source with characteristics expected of Artist’s impression an accreting, intermediate-mass black hole of M101 ULX-1. In (IMBH). A series of Gemini spectra have de- the foreground tected a Wolf-Rayet star in the system and is the black hole, surrounded by an revealed its orbital motion. This constrains accretion disk; matter the mass of the black hole in M101 ULX-1; falling into the black the object is too massive to be a neutron hole via the disk star but very unlikely to be an intermediate- produces the X-ray mass black hole. The data also show that luminosity of the the black hole accretes from the wind of system. That matter originates from the the star, not the overflow of the donor star’s wind of a Wolf-Rayet Roche lobe, as illustrated in Figure 1. star, shown in the distance. In the far “Ultra-luminous X-ray sources” (ULXs) sit background is one at the intersection of two fundamental of the spiral arms of problems in astrophysics, since this class of systems contains objects which appear to be M101. more luminous than the Eddington limit allows for stellar-mass black holes. That definition Gemini illustration by is somewhat imprecise because we don’t know the definitive upper mass limit for “stellar- Lynette Cook. mass” black holes. Nonetheless, the questions raised by the existence of these systems are clear: Is the Eddington limit somehow exceeded in ULXs? Or do ULXs contain black holes with higher-than-expected masses, perhaps even intermediate-mass IMBHs? January2014 GeminiFocus 3 Such IMBHs have long been the topic of Another easy-looking option would be to speculation and searches. Two classes of discard the Eddington limit (which assumes black holes are observationally well-estab- spherical symmetry) on the plausible-seem- lished: the stellar-mass black holes discov- ing grounds that accretion through a disk is ered in Galactic X-ray binaries, and the su- not spherically-symmetric. The simple ver- permassive ones in the centers of galaxies, sion of this argument fails, however, because, with a large mass gap separating the two at luminosities approaching the Eddington classes. The best IMBH candidate so far is in luminosity, the inner parts of the accretion ESO 243-49 HLX-1, for which the recently-in- disk are expected to become radiation-pres- ferred black hole mass does enter the upper sure dominated. Without some additional end of the IMBH range (Webb et al., 2012), unknown mechanism, the inner disk would depending on the definition adopted. consequently thicken and the accretion ge- ometry would become quasi-spherical. The remaining wide gap between stellar- mass and supermassive black holes is frus- More complicated ways of circumventing trating for those hunting them, since many the Eddington limit have been proposed. theorists assume that today’s supermassive These have tended to invoke a mechanism black holes formed via “seed” IMBHs. If no for transferring energy from the inner accre- IMBHs exist in the present-day universe, it tion disk to a corona surrounding the black would throw doubt on that scenario. Whilst hole. The concept connects naturally with not detecting IMBHs is not the same as prov- the fact that the spectra of many ULXs are ing they are not present — black holes are, dominated by a power-law component (see, after all, not intrinsically bright objects — a e.g., Gladstone, Roberts, and Done, 2009). direct detection would be very welcome.
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