Why are the Gemini telescopes important?
Gemini is the only pair of telescopes giving full coverage of both the northern and southern skies. The telescope locations are superb. Mauna Kea is the best observing site in the Northern Hemisphere. At 4200 meters, it towers above 40% of the Earth’s atmosphere and most of the atmospheric water vapour that hinders infrared observing. Cerro Pachn, 2700 meters high, sits within the dry mountains of the Atacama desert. With light-collecting mirrors 8.1 m in diameter, the Gemini twins are among the world’s largest telescopes working at optical and infrared wavelengths. Just as you can make photographs from visible light, you can use detectors to make images from infrared “light”. Infrared radiation allows astronomers to see through the smoky dust particles that wreathe forming stars and many other parts of our Galaxy. The Gemini telescopes are the best in the world for making infrared images, and are capable of making pictures even clearer than those of the Hubble Space Telescope.
