January 18, 2012 - Nature
The Gemini Observatory’s star has been slow to rise. The publicly funded observatory boasts two of the world’s largest telescopes, and offers a rare opportunity to watch both the northern and southern skies from sites in Hawaii and in Chile. Yet it has lagged in terms of scientific productivity since it opened in 2000, and millions of dollars have been spent on overambitious, highly specialized instruments that were ultimately cancelled. “It felt like a child who had gone astray,” says Frederic Chaffee, who witnessed Gemini’s struggles while director of the rival Keck Observatory on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea. “It was frustrating to watch.”
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