Blue cosmic “bullets” rifle through the outskirts of the Orion Nebula (inset, at top left) in this highly detailed, large-field composite image from the Gemini South telescope in Chile. Discovered in 1983, the Orion Bullets are clumps of gas ejected from deep within the Orion Nebula, located some 1,500 light years away from us. The violence causing this is likely related to the recent formation of a cluster of massive stars with strong winds that can expel gas at very high velocities.

Examples of Gemini Science Observations with Adaptive Optics

Following is the text from this Poster: The illustration (1) is an example of an image (NIRI H-band image at 0.26 arcsec natural seeing) without the help of adaptive optics. When starlight is collected and focused by the telescope, just prior to coming to a focus, the light entering an adaptive optics system is first collimated (2) and is reflected off a deformable mirror (3).