1 Director’s Message 23 First Light from the Markus Kissler-Patig Gemini Planet Imager Bruce Macintosh and Peter Michaud 3 Weighing the Black Hole in M101 ULX-1 27 Science Highlights Nancy A. Levenson Stephen Justham and Jifeng Liu GeMS Embarks on the 8 Ground-based Transit Spectroscopy 38 of an Exoplanet Atmosphere Universe Benoit Neichel and Rodrigo Carrasco Jacob Bean, Kevin Stevenson, Jean- Michel Desert, and Marcel Bergmann 43 Operations Corner Andy Adamson 14 Dynamical Masses of Galaxy Clusters Discovered with the 48 Instrument Development 2013 Sunyaev-Zel’dovich Effect Scot Kleinman Cristóbal Sifón, Felipe Menanteau, John P. Hughes, and L. Felipe Barrientos 54 Gemini Interns: A Glimpse to the Future 19 The Earliest Near-infrared Peter Michaud Spectroscopy of a Type Ia 56 Giving Back Supernova Peter Michaud, Maria Antonieta Eric Hsiao, Howie Marion, García, and Janice Harvey and Mark Phillips ON THE COVER: GeminiFocus January 2014 and 2013 Year in Review The cover of this first GeminiFocus is a quarterly publication of Gemini Observatory “Annual Review” issue of GeminiFocus 670 N. A‘ohoku Place, Hilo, Hawai‘i 96720 USA features images from Phone: (808) 974-2500 Fax: (808) 974-2589 the Gemini Planet Online viewing address: Imager’s first light, www.gemini.edu/geminifocus obtained in late 2013 Managing Editor: Peter Michaud (see story on page Science Editor: Nancy A. Levenson 23), and the previous Associate Editor: Stephen James O’Meara covers of GeminiFocus from 2013. All issues Designer: Eve Furchgott / Blue Heron Multimedia of GeminiFocus are Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this available at: material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the www.gemini.edu/ National Science Foundation. geminifocus 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 operate 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 science. 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 instruments, 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 Gemi- ni 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 Spectro- graph mode. January2014 2013 Year in Review GeminiFocus 1 Finally, the Gemini Planet Imager made a flam- Large and Long programs have received the boyant entry with its integration of first light in go-ahead from the Gemini Board, and the first November (see article on page 23 of this issue)! call went out in December. This scheme also led us to introduce “Priority Visiting Observing” Gemini North News — a way to observe classically while mitigating At Gemini North, we took routine operations to the risk of weather loss. Check it out at: http:// a high level — dedicating close to 95 percent of www.gemini.edu/node/11101?q=node/12096. 2013 to science observations. Also, we were able The Fast Turnaround scheme has been re- and happy to host two visiting instruments: the viewed by our advisory committees and is now Differential Speckle Survey Instrument (Steven being prototyped. We hope to introduce it by Howell, Principal Investigator (PI)) and the Texas the end of 2014. Echelon Cross Echelle Spectrograph (John Lacy, We also recognized that more “post-observing” PI). Both instruments have unique capabilities support would be very beneficial to the user that enhance Gemini’s complement of facility- community. While in-house efforts are being class instruments. Beyond being used for the PI’s spent, we also wanted to engage our users dedicated programs, both visiting instruments in supporting each other. As a result, we are were offered to the user community while being launching a new Data Reduction User Forum operated by the PI‘s teams. In the coming years, at: http://drforum.gemini.edu. Please add to the we are looking forward to more groups bringing discussion — the best contributions will be re- their instruments or experiments to our state- warded with Director Discretionary Time! of-the-art telescopes! Overall, during 2013 we saw many advances Operations Decisions in our support of the community, with original ideas that contribute to Gemini’s uniqueness. Driven by budget cuts, we reviewed the core Our outlook for 2014 promises to be no less Observatory operations. We reflected on how exciting. We are looking forward to many new our users’ science could direct the way in which discoveries by our community in the new year. we operate, rather than having our operations constrain the users’ science. This concept gen- erated many ideas. In particular, it led us to Markus Kissler-Patig is Gemini’s Director. He can consider adding two future proposal modes: be reached at: [email protected] 1) Large and Long programs that enable multi- year, high-impact ambitious projects; and 2) a Fast Turnaround proposal scheme, allowing us- ers to obtain data only a few weeks after submit- ting their proposals. 2 GeminiFocus 2013 Year in Review 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 is the tected a Wolf-Rayet star in the system and black hole, surrounded by an accretion disk; revealed its orbital motion. This constrains matter falling into the mass of the black hole in M101 ULX-1; the black hole via the object is too massive to be a neutron the disk produces the star but very unlikely to be an intermediate- X-ray luminosity of the mass black hole. The data also show that system. That matter the black hole accretes from the wind of originates from the wind of a Wolf-Rayet the star, not the overflow of the donor star’s star, shown in the Roche lobe, as illustrated in Figure 1. distance. In the far background is one “Ultra-luminous X-ray sources” (ULXs) sit of the spiral arms of at the intersection of two fundamental M101. problems in astrophysics, since this class of systems contains objects which appear to be Gemini illustration by more luminous than the Eddington limit allows for stellar-mass black holes. That definition Lynette Cook. is somewhat imprecise because we don’t know the definitive upper mass limit for “stellar- 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 2013 Year in Review 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.