Telescopic twins display double vision

Gemini South atop Cerro Pachon in Chile

By Richard Stenger
CNN Sci-Tech

(CNN) -- One of the largest ground telescopes opened its eye to the southern skies on Friday, doubling the seeing power of an identical twin tracking celestial objects in the north.

The Gemini South in Chile, in joining the Gemini North in Hawaii, will allow astronomers to make coordinated observations and view the entire sky in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres.

"These two telescopes have now become one observatory," said Gemini manager Matt Mountain, formerly of the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh, Scotland.

The pair, outfitted with giant mirrors and advanced optical technologies, can produce images as sharp as those taken by space telescopes, according to project scientists.

Boasting 27-foot (8.1-meter) diameter light-collecting mirrors, both have extremely sharp infrared vision, allowing them to peer through dark cosmic dust that obscures turbulent galaxies and regions where stars form.

New Gemini images in the neighborhood of the constellation Orion, for example, "reach deeper than any other previous observations of the region and reveal many new and interesting structures in unprecedented detail," said British astronomer Patrick Roche.

Gemini North, perched atop the volcanic mountain Mauna Kea, has made numerous notable observations since it went into service several years ago.

Demo picture of galaxy NGC 1097

The first born twin has spied the closest substellar object ever observed around another star, snapped a picture dubbed "the perfect spiral galaxy," and zoomed in on gas and dust around young stars.

"We are now able to study dusty protoplanetary disks in remarkable detail, to trace the first steps of planetary birth," Ray Jayawardhana of the University of California, Berkeley, told colleagues at a recent meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

Gemini South, situated on the pristine peak of Cerro Pachon in the Andes Mountains, should soon make its sibling proud.

"We can expect similar exciting discoveries to come from the southern skies," Gemini scientist Adrian Russell said.

Both telescopes take advantage of dry, thin, clean air in their remote mountain settings, but still must counter starlight distortions caused by the atmosphere. They employ adaptive optics technology that corrects the blurring.

The sharpness of some pictures is equivalent to resolving the separation between the headlights on an automobile, from a distance of 2,000 miles (3,220 km).