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