Gemini North Telescope Inaugurated
Credit: (c)1999 By Neelon Crawford www.PolarFineArts.com
A new mammoth
telescope has begun to inspect the northern sky.
The 8-meter
Gemini North telescope,
pictured above, was
dedicated last week in Hawaii, with
images documenting its unprecedented abilities being released.
Within two years, sister telescope
Gemini South will begin similar observations
of the southern sky from Chile.
The Gemini telescopes will collect an
enormous amount of visible and
infrared light. In the infrared, a Gemini can resolve
objects that even appear blurred to the
Hubble Space Telescope.
To achieve such high resolution, the Gemini's use
adaptive optics, a technique that continually flexes
Gemini's main mirrors
to counteract the defocusing effects of
Earth's turbulent atmosphere.
A seven-nation collaboration is completing the
Geminis under the direction of the
US National Science Foundation.