JAC is No More

With the start of March the observatory known as JAC is no more. The Joint Astronomy Center ran two telescopes, the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) and the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT). Both telescopes have been transferred to new management and will continue to pursue science.

You can get more details on Tom Kerr’s blog A Pacific View.

I would also suggest you take a few minutes and enjoy some beautiful time-lapse to celebrate the achievements of the JAC…

Starlapse: The James Clerk Maxwell Telescope from William Montgomerie on Vimeo.

A Tour of the Submillimeter Realm

In past years the club has toured the various optical observatories on Mauna Kea. Telescopes like Keck, Gemini and CFHT represent some of the largest optical telescopes in the world. There are a set of telescopes on the summit that often get overlooked, the submillimeter observatories. CSO, JCMT, and SMA all operate beyond the infrared in the submillimeter wavelengths of 0.3 to 1.4mm. These instruments enable the study of the cold and dark universe. The vast clouds of gas and dust than make up so much of the cold material between the stars and galaxies. The raw material from which everything we know is created, and to which we will return one day when the Sun has exhausted its hydrogen fuel.

Submillimeter Tour
Simon Radford gives the members of WHAC a tour of CSO

Personally I had never visited these facilities, not during my seven years on the mountain. This is something that had to change. I suspected that this was true of most of the West Hawaii Astronomy club membership. It is even more imperative in that one of the facilities, CSO, is to be decommissioned and dismantled in the next few years. Thus the goal of visiting at least a couple of the submillimeter facilities to see the other side of Mauna Kea astronomy.

When arranging the tour I contacted all three submillimeter facilities on the summit. I would have considered getting two out of three a success, I knew that there was no way I would manage to get all three scheduled for a single day. The submillimeter observatories have much smaller staffs than the large optical telescopes like Keck, thus providing a tour to a visiting group is much more difficult. In the end all three observatories were able to provide a tour on the same afternoon, something I am still surprised about. A great deal of gratitude is due to the folks who drove up the mountain on a Saturday to give our group a wonderful tour.

Continue reading “A Tour of the Submillimeter Realm”

JCMT and UKIRT Closing

Sad news that two of the telescopes atop Mauna Kea will be losing funding. Word comes from Tom on his blog Pacific View

• extend operation of JCMT to end September 2014, to allow for completion of the agreed science programme for the SCUBA-2 instrument on the JCMT

• cease STFC support for the operation of UKIRT from end September 2013, a year after the completion of its current survey programme

These shutdowns have been threatened for some time. It is disheartening to learn that the worst outcome is now reality.

Sunset Behind UKIRT
UKIRT opening for a night of observing atop Mauna Kea