Cosmology with SCUBA-2

The UK National Astronomy Meeting (this year being held in conjunction with the German Astronomical Society) is underway this week in Manchester, UK.  The conference included a specialist session on SCUBA-2 results and it was especially pleasing to see SCUBA-2 data being presented in other sessions also,including one tied to a press release issued by the SCUBA-2 Cosmology Legacy Survey and the Royal Astronomical Society.

You can read the press release, as well as a report by the BBC – don’t forget to listen to the interview on that BBC page with Prof. James Dunlop from the University of Edinburgh, one of the leaders of the SCUBA-2 Cosmology Legacy Survey.

a new semester begins, with a ‘pointed’ result…

The pointing source HH-VLA1 (left-of-centre) at 850 µm.

This week, the new 12A semester started and this sees the first time that SCUBA-2 will be used by the general JCMT community for science outside of the JCMT Legacy Surveys. Another important milestone for us all.

The image above demonstrates the potential of a different approach to doing science with SCUBA-2. The bright source to the left-of-middle is frequently used by our telescope operators to correct for drifts in the accuracy of where the telescope is pointing in the sky. Such corrective observations are made at the beginning of the night and then several times throughout, in different parts of the sky. The image above represents just 36 separate pointing observations, obtained over several, disparate nights, and has no more than 60 seconds of integrated exposure time in the central region. Yet, some interesting structure around the bright source and beyond is clearly detected.

There will be many hundreds of pointing observations taken over the course of an observing semester, and they are all stored in the JCMT Science Archive and made freely available to the public. So the potential is there for someone to look at the archive of our pointing observations, and perhaps discover something new.

SCUBA-2 cold for Christmas

Given the excitement over the SCUBA-2 press release we didn’t mention that the instrument cooled back down according to schedule and was ready for observing on the night of the 9th of December.

Unfortunately, the weather has followed with its own cool down and Mauna Kea has been suffering to its first real winter storms of this season. Since SCUBA-2 was ready to observe we have had 4 groups at the telescope: 3 from the JCMT Legacy Survey teams and one from the University of Hawaii. At the time of writing, an observer from one of those JLS teams is valiantly trying to get some data for her team!

It remains to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

SCUBA-2 press release rolls out

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This week saw the official SCUBA-2 press release go out. The official pages can be found here:

• JAC:     http://outreach.jach.hawaii.edu/pressroom/2011_SCUBA-2/index.html
• STFC:     http://www.stfc.ac.uk/News+and+Events/38072.aspx
• UK ATC:     http://www.roe.ac.uk/roe/support/pr/pressreleases/20111205-scuba-2/index.html
• UBC: http://www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/2011/12/06/ubc-scientists-key-contributors-to-super-cool-camera-built-to-reveal-early-life-of-stars/

with further imagery at the SCUBA-2 Image Gallery (a selection of which are seen in the slideshow above).

There was also a lot of interest generated in local and national press in various places ranging from Hawaii, Canada, UK and India. And in today’s world, lost of interest generated on Twitter (including some diving sites!). Here is a selection of some sites that I came across – let us know if there are more.

• http://www.theverge.com/2011/12/6/2615310/scuba-2-submillimeter-camera
• http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2011/12/06/core-of-new-deep-space-camera-is-the-coldest-place-in-the-universe/
• http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-revolutionary-camera-reveals-dark-side.html
• http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-12/uobc-usk120511.php
• http://esciencenews.com/articles/2011/12/08/powerful.nist.detectors.hawaiian.telescope.probe.origins.stars.planets.and.galaxies?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
• http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2011/12/07/science-scuba-2-camera.html
• http://www.winextra.com/archives/scuba-2-worlds-largest-submillimeter-camera-gets-set-to-go-to-work/
• http://zeenews.india.com/news/technology/scuba-2-to-give-star-gazers-deeper-look-into-space_745927.html
• http://www.bigislandvideonews.com/2011/12/07/scuba-2-unveiled-at-james-clerk-maxwell-telescope/
• http://www.dailycamera.com/boulder-county-news/ci_19492854
• http://www.walesonline.co.uk/cardiffonline/cardiff-news/2011/12/07/new-cardiff-developed-camera-helps-star-gazers-look-deeper-into-space-91466-29907983/
• http://www.newstrackindia.com/newsdetails/253692
• http://divesitenet.com/dive/scuba-world-news/scuba-2-unveiled-at-james-clerk-maxwell-telescope-big-island-video-news?utm_source=The+Dive+Site+Network&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=scuba
• http://astronomy.activeboard.com/forum.spark?aBID=58381&p=3&topicID=13177736&utm_source=AstroBot&utm_medium=twitter
• http://weareallinthegutter.wordpress.com/2011/12/07/in-other-astro-news-hello-scuba-2-hubbles-milestone-an-anniversary-astroweather-on-the-news/
• http://orbitingfrog.com/post/13876595918/recycled-electrons-back-to-prohibition
• http://www.gizmag.com/scuba-2-submillimeter-camera/20750/
• http://www.scotsman.com/scotland-on-sunday/scotland/scots_scientists_to_gaze_into_the_unknown_with_big_bang_camera_1_2014382

SCUBA-2 warm after 8-months of continuous operation

It doesn’t seem that long ago when one of our major concerns with the SCUBA-2 project was the reliability of the fridge. In March, earlier this year, we installed a liquid Helium cold trap with the aim that it should filter out any contaminants that may have inadvertantly entered the He/He-3 gas mixture.

It’s astonishing how well this has worked. As the graph above shows, the fridge has kept its temperature all the way through the last 8 months, allowing us to control the temperature of the arrays at about 0.09 K. Furthermore, consider that the fridge was designed to only ever be cold for 6  months at a time.

So just this week, we initiated a controlled warm up of SCUBA-2 so that we can carry out some essential maintenance on the refrigeration system. We will be cooling the instrument back down in a few weeks and be ready for more observing with SCUBA-2 at the start of December.

Mauna Kea earthquake ‘felt’ by SCUBA-2

Last Wednesday on the 19th of October, just after 2pm, a 4.5 magnitude earthquake shook the Big Island. These earthquakes are not an uncommon occurrence here, with frequent tremors occurring of around a magnitude of 4 and below. However, this particular earthquake happened just to the west and about 19 km below Mauna Kea and was felt by other observatories on the summit, including UKIRT where the shear pins, which protect the telescope structure from violent shakes, had to be replaced.

JCMT escaped unscathed, but the tremor was detected in the SCUBA-2 temperature logs, as can be seen in the graph above. The units on the left-hand axis are in degrees Kelvin. The mechanical energy that entered the instrument due to the earthquake was registered as a small temperature rise in the mixing chamber of SCUBA-2’s dilution refrigerator. This change in temperature was just 20 mK, or 0.02 degrees.  There were a number of aftershocks that followed, and these were also detected by the temperature sensors in the fridge, but these are harder to spot on this graph.

First observers

The first observers from the community are finally at the telescope and observing with SCUBA-2 for the JCMT Legacy Surveys. Here in the JCMT control room you we have (left to right and front) Mark Swinbank (Durham), Isaac Roseboom (Edinburgh) and David Eden (Liverpool John Moores). At the back you can see Jeff Cox, the JCMT telescope systems specialist for the night, making sure that the telescope and instrument are operating smoothly.

 

 

SCUBA-2 project passes two huge milestones

Close up detail of dust emission from the inner part of our Galaxy.

This is just a short note to announce that the SCUBA-2 project past two huge milestones this day. First, the instrument was formally accepted by the observatory, and, SCUBA-2 was included in the JCMT Call for Proposals for semester 12A, which will run between February and July, 2012.

The details for the call for proposals can be found here.

SCUBA-2 to be released to the community

The high mass star forming region, DR21, as imaged by SCUBA-2 at 450µm

The following announcement was recently made by Prof. Gary Davis, Director of the Joint Astronomy Centre, to the JCMT community. It marks an incredibly important milestone in the project.

To the JCMT observing community,
It is with great pleasure that I write to announce the imminent
release of SCUBA-2 for science observing!

We are now in the final stages of commissioning the instrument on the
JCMT, and I anticipate formally accepting ownership from the UKATC by
the end of this month. Accordingly, the instrument will be available
for science starting on 1st October.

The JCMT Board have determined that the JCMT Legacy Survey (JLS) is
the highest priority for the scientific use of SCUBA-2 and for the
exploitation of its unprecedented capabilities. Consequently, the
usage of SCUBA-2 during the first four months will focus exclusively
on this programme. The coordinators of the JLS projects are already
well aware of this and arrangements for the Science Verification phase
(the precursor to JLS observing) are coming together nicely.

With our initial focus on getting the JLS programme up and running, PI
access to SCUBA-2 will commence in semester 12A. We have recently
issued two announcements to this list, alerting potential PIs to the
timetable. As a reminder, the Call for 12A Proposals will be issued
on 30th September and the proposal deadline will be just two weeks
later, on 14th October. I am grateful to the national TAGs and the
ITAC for agreeing to an accelerated timetable for the time allocation
process on this occasion.

This Call will contain explicit instructions for calculating the
observing time required to reach a given depth over a given map area,
and as such the Call will represent our first public statement of the
sensitivity of the instrument.
I am of course well aware that the community has been awaiting the
release of SCUBA-2 for several years. It has been a long and winding
road to reach this point, and I thank you for your patience. I have
every expectation that it will prove to be a success!

Best regards,

Gary Davis,

Director JCMT.

SCUBA-2 to be included in call for proposals for semester 12A

An announcement via email to the JCMT community two weeks ago, indicated the approach of a hugely important milestone in the SCUBA-2 project. This announcement informed that the JCMT call for proposals for the next semester (12A, to start in February 2012) has been delayed to the end of September. With SCUBA-2 commissioning continuing apace, this delay will allow us to obtain reliable estimates of the instrument sensitivity and performance and to accommodate its inclusion in a call for proposals – for the first time, SCUBA-2 will be offered to the community in a standard call for proposals.

We are looking forward to reading all the exciting science cases for SCUBA-2.