Adaptive Optics at the New 8‐Meter Gemini Telescope
These two extraordinarily detailed near‐infrared images of the elegant planetary’ nebula prosaically named BD+30 3639 were produced by two very different instruments. The right‐hand panel shows an image recently made with an adaptive‐optics system on the 8.1 meter Gemini North Telescope, dedicated just three months ago on Hawaii's Mauna Kea 1 (Gemini's southern twin is nearing completion in the Chilean Andes.) The left‐hand panel shows, for comparison, an image taken in 1994 with the recently corrected Hubble Space Telescope (HST)2