GNIRS was built by NOAO in Tucson, Arizona and delivered to Cerro Pachon in late October 2003. Commissioning of the majority of the modes took place in stages during 2004.  GNIRS was first made available for science use in 2004B. The instrument was damaged in 2007 while at Cerro Pachon and, with the exception of its integral field unit, has now been repaired and is installed at its new home on the Gemini North telescope. Additional work to improve the performance of the instrument will continue during the next few years.

GNIRS offers a wide variety of spectroscopic capabilities. These include long-slit (single order) spectroscopy within the 1.0-5.4 µm range at 2-pixel spectral resolving powers, R, of approximately 1700, 5000 and 18000 with a choice of two pixel scales (0.15"/pix and 0.05"/pix), and cross-dispersed spectroscopy giving complete 0.9-2.5 µm coverage at R~1700 and partial coverage at R~5000. A variety of slit widths from 0.10 to 1.0 arcsec are available. The different pixel scales are achieved with four cold-changeable cameras of "long" and "short" focal lengths optimized for "blue" (0.9-2.5 µm) and "red" (2.8-5.4 µm) wavelengths. GNIRS also has limited imaging capabilities. The instrument can be used with adaptive optics over most of its wavelength range.

The Instrument Scientist for GNIRS is Rachel Mason. Gemini staff who also support GNIRS include Tom Geballe, Marie Lemoine-Busserolle, Jaehyon Rhee, Asa Bluck, Michael Hoenig and Jesse Ball.

Announcements

See the Status and Availability pages for the most recent news and older news items.

GNIRS science highlights

How to use these pages

The GNIRS pages are organized as follows.

• Status and Availability: Modes available in the current and upcoming semesters
• System Verification: Call for proposals and a list of accepted programs.
• Long-Slit and Cross-Dispersed Spectroscopy: Characteristics of GNIRS' various spectroscopic modes and guidelines on how best to use the instrument in these modes.
• Imaging capabilities: Brief description of GNIRS' imaging mode.
• Sensitivity and Overheads: Sensitivity tables, integration time calculator, and details of observing overheads
• Guiding Options: Guiding considerations, and wavefront sensors available for use with GNIRS
• Calibration: Info on GCAL, flats and arcs, standard stars, and baseline calibrations
• Observation Preparation: How to configure GNIRS in the Observing Tool
• Data Format and Reduction: Examples of GNIRS data and links to data reduction resources
• Documents: GNIRS optical layout; design documents and references

Also see the Near-IR Resources section, which contains generic information about observing at 1-5 µm as well as details about calibrations, standard stars, etc. that apply to Gemini's near-IR instruments.

Click on the image to see a close-up view of GNIRS on Gemini South