Message from the Director

I have been particularly pleased and gratified by the extremely professional and efficient way the SCUBA team from ROE and the local staff have blended together to undertake the SCUBA assembly, installation and testing in Hilo and the subsequent assembly on the JCMT. This was an area that I had some concerns about in the light of commissioning some other major instruments and so I had required a high degree of planning to take place prior to the event. As it turned out, everything went extremely well. One of the main topics that the team need to focus on now (as well the actual commissioning) is the integration and training of the JCMT support astronomers in the SCUBA observing mode in preparation for the observations scheduled to commence at the end of the year.

I should also say that one of my big worries was that we would have endless software niggles, requiring ages to fathom out and significantly delaying the commissioning programme. I am delighted to say that while there have been the inevitable software bugs to fix, we are far better placed in this aspect than I had dared hope. Again, this is a tribute to both the ROE and local software staff supporting SCUBA. Nevertheless, the commissioning plan is undergoing constant modification in order to match the instrument, weather, and most-pressing problems requiring fixes. This has meant that we have not had the time to make many images which we could plaster over the cover of this Newsletter and on the Web. The actual observations of sources (apart from flat-fielding on the planets and 3C111) have been very sparse. As new observations become available in the testing phase, we will display them on the Web.

For those currently writing SCUBA proposals, do not worry, the SCUBA team will not be out scooping all those obvious sources in your lists and so it is with great enthusiasm I exhort you to get writing those proposals. Remember, although there is a maximum period of 24 hours there is no official minimum time- period. However, to help the referees, technical assessors and the TAG members in the limited time available to them, something like one-hour (including overheads) might be a target for you to consider (but this is just a personal view and the ITAC have set no ruling on this matter).

The length of time taken by the SCUBA project, and also RxB3 and RxW have been a matter of great concern to myself and the JCMT Board. We must get instruments onto the telescope more quickly, and Phil Jewell has proposed that the time from inception to commissioning for new instruments should be no more than three years. This has led us to consider the 'fast-track' concept, with receivers perhaps being delivered in stages — only the final stage having all the 'bells and whistles' of the current generation of 'observatory instruments'.

Plans for the development of the JCMT and its instrumentation are currently being worked up and members of the JCMT Advisory Panel will have these plans in early October, so that they can consult their user communities in time for the Panel meeting in early November and the Board two weeks later. At this Board meeting it is intended to identify and begin implementation of the ten-year development programme. We have an exciting tranche of developments to propose, and not surprisingly their total cost exceeds the funds available in the Development Fund to 2004. Therefore, some serious decisions will need to be made in November. These decisions will mould what instruments the JCMT will possess and how it might operate in the next century. Basically these decisions will shape how the JCMT takes its place in the future radio astronomical community.

In this light I should report that there has been development on the B-Band array front, or at least the new correlator proposed for it. Due to a very unfortunate piece of timing, we needed to purchase a raft of chips for the correlator before the final close-down of the line at the fabrication plant (or lose this opportunity). With the approval of the Board, this has now been done — and we will either be venturing down the road of chip speculation, or commencing on a new correlator — just one of the decisions to be made in November.

I need to close with an apology about the state of the current 230 GHz receiver (RxA2). I had expected that this would have been upgraded within the last six months as it was well known that (like UKT14) it was fast becoming life-expired and in need of major work. However, with the delay to the new receivers, the effort expected for the upgrade was not forthcoming and a series of interim measures were put in place. However, fate did not smile kindly on us and RxA2 finally gave up the ghost as far as being a useful instrument. This necessitated shipping it to RAL for repairs and upgrading with the installation of a new mixer from Tony Kerr. The history of this is described on the Web.

This brings me to my final point, the Web. The number and pace of changes taking place and the continued uncertainty of the delivery of the new instruments has amply shown that the timescale for notification of these time-critical information to the user-community is now incompatible with release in the paper-version of a Newsletter. From now on the Web will be the sole information medium for time-critical issues, especially those relevant to telescope applications. (Note that we also intend that the Newsletter will also appear on the Web). Therefore, this edition of the Newsletter marks a change, it now contains far more science and general news than information for writing observing proposals. Please help us in this by sending Graeme Watt interesting science articles resulting from your JCMT observations.

The future looks extremely bright with SCUBA now here and RxB3 and RxW to follow. I look forward to an exciting semester of new discovery.

Ian Robson,

Director, JCMT