SCUBA: a common-user submillimetre camera operating on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope
Abstract
SCUBA, the Submillimetre Common-User Bolometer Array, built by the Royal Observatory Edinburgh for the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, is the most versatile and powerful of a new generation of submillimetre cameras. It combines a sensitive dual-waveband imaging array with a three-band photometer, and is sky-background-limited by the emission from the Mauna Kea atmosphere at all observing wavelengths from 350 mumuto 2 mm. The increased sensitivity and array size mean that SCUBA maps close to 10 000 times faster than its single-pixel predecessor (UKT14). SCUBA is a facility instrument, open to the world community of users, and is provided with a high level of user support. We give an overview of the instrument, describe the observing modes, user interface and performance figures on the telescope, and present a sample of the exciting new results that have revolutionized submillimetre astronomy.
- Publication:
-
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
- Pub Date:
- March 1999
- DOI:
- 10.1046/j.1365-8711.1999.02111.x
- arXiv:
- arXiv:astro-ph/9809122
- Bibcode:
- 1999MNRAS.303..659H
- Keywords:
-
- INSTRUMENTATION: DETECTORS;
- TELESCOPES;
- DUST;
- EXTINCTION;
- RADIO CONTINUUM: GALAXIES;
- RADIO CONTINUUM: ISM;
- RADIO CONTINUUM: STARS;
- Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- 15 pages, 15 figures, accepted for Monthly Notices of RAS