File:RMC 136 (gemini-2013-rmc136-legacy).jpg

Despite years of study with the largest telescopes and best instruments, the nature of star cluster centers is not well understood. The best data to date from Hubble on R 136, a local analog to starburst clusters in distant galaxies, are still incomplete. The crowded fields make it difficult to count all the stars in the core due to the extensive overlapping of stars. With GeMS, astronomers can now resolve most of R 136’s core down to one or two solar masses and determine if stars less massive than this prevail. “Having a wide field-of-view with uniform image quality makes such investigations easier and more accurate than could be done before,” says National Optical Astronomy Observatory researcher and Principal Investigator Robert Blum. “Using GeMS, we can obtain the very best description of the stellar content of R 136 ever. Not until the next generation of large ground based telescopes are built will we be able to do better.”