Gallery: A New Camera Turns an Earth Telescope into a Space Telescope

http://tinyurl.com/k43g3ao

July 8, 2013 - Discover
For three decades, astronomers have been waging war with the air around them, and slowly winning. A succession of increasingly advanced technologies–under the name active optics, and more recently adaptive optics–compensated for the continuous blowing, flowing, shimmering, and general blurring of Earth’s atmosphere. These devices are not perfect, but they do a credible job sharpening the view. Essentially all of the world’s major observatories now use some system along those lines.

Now the engineers at the Gemini Observatory have taken blur-elimination technology a step beyond. They have just equipped the 8.1-meter Gemini South telescope, located atop Cerro Pachon in Chile, with a system called GeMS...

Telescope Gets New Gear to Bring Stars Into Focus

http://www.space.com/14294-gemini-telescope-adaptive-optics-stars.html

July 3, 2013 - Space.com
Stars viewed by an observatory in South America have just lost their twinkle. Images from this ground-based telescope are brighter and clearer than ever before, thanks to a new instrument on the Gemini South observatory that reduces the blurring, or twinkle, caused by Earth's atmosphere.
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Gemini Observatory New Optics Provides Shaper Universe for Astronomers

http://tinyurl.com/m87xw83

July 3, 2013 - SpaceRef
Astronomers recently got their hands on Gemini Observatory's revolutionary new adaptive optics system, called GeMS, "and the data are truly spectacular!" says Robert Blum, Deputy Director of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory with funding by the U.S. National Science Foundation.
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Revolutionary instrument delivers a sharper universe to astronomers

http://tinyurl.com/q2w4kuu

July 3, 2013 - Astronomy.com
Astronomers recently got their hands on Gemini Observatory’s revolutionary new adaptive optics system, called GeMS. “And the data are truly spectacular!” said Robert Blum, deputy director of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory with funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation. “What we have seen so far signals an incredible capability that leaps ahead of anything in space or on the ground — and it will for some time.” Blum is currently using GeMS to study the environments in and around star clusters, and his preliminary data, targeting the spectacular cluster identified as RMC 136, are among the set of seven images being released. The remaining six images — spanning views from violent star-forming regions to the graceful interaction of distant colliding galaxies — only hint at the diversity of cutting-edge research that GeMS enables.
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Adaptive Optics Details New Space Images From Gemini Observatory

http://tinyurl.com/m2hpjcf

July 3, 2013 - RedOrbit

Scientists at the Gemini Observatory in Chile have just released the first new images of space created with their state-of-the-art adaptive optics system, called GeMS.

An acronym for Gemini Multi-conjugate adaptive optics System, GeMS allows scientists at the observatory to capture deep-space images without the usual distortions created by Earth’s atmosphere.
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‘The New Cool’: How These Sharp Space Pictures Were Snapped From A Ground Telescope Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/103269/the-new-cool-how-these-sharp-space-pictures-were-snapped-from-a-ground-telescope/#ixzz2YCKgNRL0

http://tinyurl.com/pf474cd

July 3, 2013 - UniverseToday.com
Rise above Earth with a telescope, and one huge obstacle to astronomy is removed: the atmosphere. We love breathing that oxygen-nitrogen mix, but it’s sure not fun to peer through it. Ground-based telescopes have to deal with air turbulence and other side effects of the air we need to breathe.

Enter adaptive optics — laser-based systems that can track the distortions in the air and tell computers in powerful telescopes how to flex their mirrors. That sparkling picture above came due to a new system at the Gemini South telescope in Chile.

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Telescope uses new optic tools to capture super-sharp cosmic images

http://tinyurl.com/lxezx4n

July  3, 3013 - UPI.com
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The telescope at the Gemini Observatory in La Silla, Chile, uses a revolutionary new adaptive optics system combining multiple lasers and deformable mirrors to remove atmospheric distortions -- blurriness -- from ground-based images.

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