Taken in front of the Gemini South Dome, this photograph includes (from right to left) Jeremy Mould (Director NOAO), Phil Puxley (Director Gemini South), Harvey Richer (Canadian Gemini Scientist) and Greg Fahlman (Director General Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics - NRC).

At the end of June 2003, Gemini will be holding an international meeting at Aspen where the discussion will try and identify the key scientific questions that the community of Gemini astronomers will want to pursue in the next 10-15 years. From this it is expected that ideas for future instrumentation will be developed. However, it is clear from the Gemini Board directives (see Board resolutions below) that it is the scientific argument that will win the day - not simply a statement that this or that instrument should be built. On May 4-5 representatives from the Canadian astronomical community met in Montreal to discuss what Canadian astronomers view as the key questions. The meeting consisted of discussions in 4 groups of different areas of specialization and a final open discussion that involved all the participants. This is similar to the format for the Aspen meeting.

The groups were composed of the following people. Planets: JJ Kavelaars (Group Leader), Rene Doyon, Rene Racine, James Wadsley. Star Formation: Doug Johnstone (Group Leader), Pierre Bastien, Mike Fich, George Mitchell. Resolved Stellar Systems: Doug Welch (Group Chair), David Bohlender, Tim Davidge, Greg Fahlman, Harvey Richer. High Redshift: Bob Abraham (Group Chair), Stephanie Cote, David Crampton, Mike Hudson, Stephanie Plante, Luc Simard.

Canada will be represented in Aspen by the 4 group chairs, Dennis Crabtree, David Crampton, Rene Doyon and Harvey Richer. The big science questions enunciated by these groups (and the associated instrumentation required) was as follows.

• Planets: IS THERE LIFE ON OTHER PLANETS? (JHK wide field imager - 2' at least - and an associated spectrograph - low resolution is acceptable)
• Star Formation: HOW DID THE GALAXY FORM? (High resolution IR spectrograph - mid IR imager and spectrograph - much bigger field than Michelle provides)
• Resolved Stars: FIRST STARS AND FIRST POPULATIONS. (Astrometric quality imager with field at least 10' - low order AO correction)
• High Redshift: EQUATION OF STATE OF DARK ENERGY AND ITS DERIVATIVE WITH Z, ABSORPTION LINE FEATURES OF FIRST LIGHT OBJECTS (Low resolution (R ~3000) near IR spectrograph
  

The May 2003 Gemini Board meeting was held in La Serena, Chile. This was an extremely opportune time to have the meeting as the Gemini South base facility had just been completed (at about half the cost of the Northern facility) and the telescope on Cerro Pachon was being populated with newly arrived instruments during the meeting. This allowed members that made the trip to the summit of Cerro Pachon after the meeting to view the telescope fully instrumented - a truly wonderful sight indeed.

T-ReCS, one of the newly delivered instruments to Gemini, was mounted for the first time during the Board meeting. T-ReCS is a mid-IR imager and spectrograph that was built at the University of Florida. The alligator would clearly like to munch on a Canadian astronomer.

A few of the resolutions passed by the Board at its May meeting that are particularly relevant to the Canadian community are listed below.

1) The Gemini Board noted the successful results of the GMOS-S commissioning and commends the ATC-HIA-Gemini GMOS-S team for their outstanding work.

2) The Gemini Board was pleased to see the latest images arriving from ALTAIR and recognizes the dedicated work of the HIA-Gemini ALTAIR team.

3) The Board recommends that the Gemini Science Committee review the current Observatory model of queue and classical observing fractions (50-50) and assess whether the science objectives of the communities are being addressed.

4) The Board notes the establishment of the 4-member Gemini Visiting Committee.

5) The Board requests that the Director bring forward as soon as possible, a proposal for the permanent transfer of Michelle to Gemini.

6) The Gemini Board endorses the plan for the continued limited staff involvement in New Initiative Office activities.

7) The Board urges the Aspen 2003 participants to focus on the development of key science questions for Gemini operating in a scientifically exciting era. With a sufficiently compelling science case, the designated representatives from the partner funding agencies will actively pursue efforts to find the resources to enable the Gemini community to address these scientific issues in a highly competitive environment.

8) The Board notes the activities of the working group to develop proposals for revised procedures for the time allocation process that will seek to provide equitable treatment for proposals spanning more than one TAC and that do not unnecessarily disadvantage time requests because of their size.

While the Board meeting was in progress, bHROS, the high resolution optical spectrograph, was being installed in the pier of Gemini South. Shown in this image taken within the pier are Margaret Aderin (bHROS Project Manager), Roger Davies (UK - Gemini Board Chair), Harvey Richer and Greg Fahlman.

Last year the Canadian Gemini Office and I instituted a trial contest in British Columbia to make elementary and high school students more aware of Gemini in particular and astronomy in general. The contest encouraged school children to write a paragraph about their favourite night time object and the winners would have it photographed especially for them by Gemini. The contest was extremely successful last year with an essay on the Trifid Nebula the winning entry. The Gemini GMOS image of the Trifid proved to be spectacular. It made the front page of the Vancouver Sun (above the fold!) and was widely reproduced. We decided to be more ambitious this year and ran the contest across all of Canada. Over 500 entries were received with the winners coming from Calgary (high school) and Winnipeg (elementary school). The high school winner requested an image of the Cat's Eye Nebula while the younger winning entry wanted Jupiter. Gemini obtained GMOS images of the Cat's Eye in early May. On June 6 I went to Calgary to present the poster to the winning student. There was good press coverage and the presentation itself was great - the student's class was there and it gave me an opportunity to tell them about Gemini. Peter Michaud, the outreach director for Gemini, was on the phone from Hilo during the presentation and this added quite a nice touch. Below is the image taken by Gemini of this nebula.

This Gemini GMOS image covers a field of about 5' on a side. It is a composite of three five minute exposures in g, r and i. The HST image of the Cat's Eye Nebula is in the upper left hand corner, approximately to scale but not oriented as the GMOS image. The detail in that image is obliterated by the 11th magnitude central star in the Gemini picture, however a bit of the detail can still be seen along the edges of the stellar profile. What is clearly seen in the Gemini image is material, presumably from the central star, at distances large compared to that seen with HST.