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As part of the National Science Foundation funded "Gemini in the Era of MultiMessenger Astronomy" (GEMMA) program, Gemini Observatory is developing GNAO, a widefield adaptive optics (AO) facility for Gemini-North on Maunakea, the only 8m-class open-access telescope available to the US astronomers in the northern hemisphere. GNAO will provide the user community with a queue-operated Multi-Conjugate AO (MCAO) system, enabling a wide range of innovative solar system, Galactic, and extragalactic science with a particular focus on synergies with JWST in the area of time-domain astronomy. The GNAO effort builds on institutional investment and experience with the more limited block-scheduled Gemini Multi-Conjugate System (GeMS), commissioned at Gemini South in 2013. The project involves close partnerships with the community through the recently established Gemini AO Working Group and the GNAO Science Team, as well as external instrument teams. The modular design of GNAO will enable a planned upgrade to a Ground Layer AO (GLAO) mode when combined with an Adaptive Secondary Mirror (ASM). By enhancing the natural seeing by an expected factor of two, GLAO will vastly improve Gemini North's observing efficiency for seeing-limited instruments and strengthen its survey capabilities for multi-messenger astronomy., Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, ASTRO 2020 Decadal Survey

Raven is a Multi-Object Adaptive Optics science demonstrator which has been used on-sky at Subaru telescope from May 2014 to July 2015. Raven has been developed at the University of Victoria AO Lab, in partnership with NRC, NAOJ and Tohoku University. Raven includes three open loop WFSs, a central laser guide star WFS, and two science pick-off arms feeding light to the Subaru IRCS spectrograph. Raven supports different AO modes: SCAO, open-loop GLAO and MOAO. This paper gives an overview of the instrument design, compares the on-sky performance of the different AO modes and presents some of the science results achieved with MOAO.