January 6, 2012 - Astronomy.com
On December 16, 2011, a decade of hard work culminated at the Gemini South telescope in Chile when a next-generation adaptive optics (AO) system produced its first ultra-sharp wide-field image. The first target image showed a portion of a dense cluster of stars called NGC 288. This first-light image reveals details at nearly the theoretical limit of Gemini’s 8-meter mirror over an unprecedented large patch of the night sky.
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