Category: News

Call for Proposals 17A

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The East Asian Observatory is happy to invite PI observing proposals for semester 17A at JCMT (for details see here).

Semester 17A runs from 01 February 2017 to 31 July 2017. You can reach the proposal handling system, Hedwig,  and find complete details of this Call at:

https://proposals.eaobservatory.org/

Any further questions should be directed to our helpdesk:

helpdesk@eaobservatory.org

If this is your first visit to Hedwig, you should go to ‘Log in’ and generate an account. There is a ‘Help’ facility at the upper right corner, and individual Help tags at many other places.

The 17A Call for Proposals closes on the 15th of September 2016.

NEW: The East Asian Observatory invites requests for Urgent Observing at any time – and you can now submit these request via a special Call in our Hedwig proposal system. You can find details here.

Constraints and guidance on applicant eligibility, the available instrumentation, the required content of the proposal, and other aspects of the proposal are as described in the Call for Proposals for the current semester – except as itemized below.

Urgent Requests should clearly describe the following:
1. The urgency for the observations, and why a response to the regular, semi-annual Call for Proposals is/was inappropriate.
2. The time span over which observations may be made or the specific times at which they must be made.
3. The timescale for analysis of resulting data and for publication thereof; which ought to be proportionately urgent . . .

The above information should appear in the Scientific Justifications section of the proposal; itemized as above, please. If approved, proposals will be graded with respect to the approved projects in the current semester and executed via JCMT’s Flexible Observing scheme.

– 2016/08/15

Face-to- face workshop for “SAMPLING-TOP- SCOPE”, December 14-16, Beijing -1 st announcement

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The Planck satellite has discovered more than ten thousand Galactic cold clumps, the so-called “Planck Galactic Cold Clumps” (PGCCs). The PGCC catalog, covering the whole sky, hence probes wildly different environments, and represents a real goldmine for investigations of the early phases of star formation. After the successful start of the pioneer survey with the PMO 14-m telescope, we are conducting a joint survey (“SAMPLING-TOP- SCOPE”) towards 1000-2000 PGCCs with the SMT 10-m, TRAO 14-m, and JCMT 15-m telescopes. “SAMPLING” (SMT “All-sky” Mapping of PLanck Interstellar Nebulae in the Galaxy) is an ESO public survey inJ=2-1 12CO/13CO emission using the SMT 10-m telescope. “TOP” (TRAO Observations of Planck cold clumps) aims at an unbiased J=1-0 12CO/13CO survey of 2000 Planck Galactic Cold Clumps with the Taeduk Radio Astronomy Observatory 14-meter telescope. “SCOPE” (SCUBA-2 Continuum Observations of Pre-protostellar Evolution) is a legacy survey using SCUBA-2 at the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) of the East Asia Observatory (EAO) to survey 1000 Planck galactic cold clumps at 850 micron. We are also actively developing follow-up observations towards the SCUBA-2 cores detected in “SCOPE” with other ground-based telescopes (e.g. KVN 21-m, NRO 45-m, Effelsberg 100-m, Arecibo 300-m, SMA, and ALMA). Through these observations, we will study how dense cores form and how star formation varies as a function of environment, the universality of filaments in the cold ISM and their roles in generating dense cores, the existence of a density threshold for dense core formation, how dust properties change in different environments, and how dust properties affect the chemical evolution of dense cores.

To promote collaborations among team members on using the survey data for science, we will hold a face-to-face workshop on Dec. 14-16 at Peking University, Beijing, China. To indicate your interest in attending the workshop, please sign your name on the following doodle page:

http://doodle.com/poll/443gppgf4mc4y5rc

More details of the workshop can be found on our wiki page:

https://topscope.asiaa.sinica.edu.tw/tiki/tiki-index.php

Program (preliminary)

Dec 14: registration and reception
Dec 15: talks and discussions
Dec 16: talks and discussions

SOC: Tie Liu; Mark Thompson; Sheng-Yuan Liu; Gary Fuller; Ken Tatematsu; Yuefang Wu; Di Li; James di Francesco; Kee-Tae Kim; Ke Wang; Isabelle Ristorcelli; Mika Juvela

LOC: Jie Yao; Chao Zhang; Shuxian Li; Huawei Zhang; Yuefang Wu (ywu@pku.edu.cn); Tie Liu (liutiepku@gmail.com)

– 2016/07/21

JCMT Legacy Release 1 (SCUBA-2 850µm)

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The JCMT is pleased to announce that its JCMT Legacy Release 1 (SCUBA-2 850µm) data set is now publicly available. This project makes available to the community uniformly reduced observations of most public SCUBA-2 850µm observations taken before 2013-08-01, as well as coadds and emission catalogs.  Please see our web page on the JCMT-LR1 for more details.

JCMT-LR1 (September 2015: SCUBA-2 850µm)

  • Public 850µm SCUBA-2 observations taken between 2011-02-01 and 2013-08-01.
  • Gridded onto HEALPix tiles using the HPX projection.
  • All reduced using the same SMURF makemap dimmconfig ‘jsa_generic’ (included in the Starlink 2015A release)
  • Coadds of all the reduced non-pointing observations which passed Quality Assurance coadded onto a single tile.
  • Catalogues of detected (>5σ) regions of contiguous emission (extents) towards each tile.
  • Catalogues of local peaks within the extents of each tile.
  • Over 2000 hours of observing time included.
  • Search CADC with proposal ID=’JCMT-LR1′ to view the coadds and catalogues.

 

Call for Proposals 16A

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The East Asian Observatory is happy to invite PI observing proposals for semester 16A at JCMT (for details see here).

Semester 16A runs from 01 February 2016 to 31 July 2016. We are launching this Call through a new proposal handling system: Hedwig. You can reach Hedwig and find complete details of this Call at:

https://proposals.eaobservatory.org/

At your first visit, you should go to ‘Log in’ and generate an account. We hope you will find Hedwig easy to use: there is a ‘Help’ facility at the upper right corner, and individual Help tags at many places on the proposal pages.

The 16A Call for Proposals closes on the 22nd of September, 2015.

In addition, it should be noted that we will embark on survey observing in the 16A semester – and as such, PI time is more limited than the current semester, however we still strongly encourage PI submissions as at least 800 hours of time will be available to EAO and partner region investigators. Some alterations have also been made to the PI eligibility for Canada – please see the Call for details.

New Horizons for the JCMT with the East Asian Observatory: Latest Science from the JCMT

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2015 IAU Splinter Session

August 6th 6pm-8pm  

Room 312 Hawaii Convention Center

The East Asian Observatory has forged a new path for the JCMT following the successful transfer of operation to EAO in March 2015. Operations immediately resumed with an EAO Pilot Science semester initiated in late March, taking successful science with JCMT’s signature instruments, and recommencing commissioning of the additional instrument elements (Pol-2 and FTS-2) for SCUBA-2. In this special session, we will present the latest results from the JCMT Legacy Surveys, completed in early 2015. We will also show some of the recent results from Pilot Science, and discuss the plans EAO and its partners have for continuing to keep the JCMT at the cutting edge of sub-millimeter science.

Organizer: Jessica Dempsey

 6:00pm: Welcome and introduction (Paul Ho)

JCMT Legacy Science: New Insights
6:10pm: The Cosmology Legacy Survey (Jim Geach)
6:25pm: Current and future directions in star formation research with the JCMT (Derek Ward-Thompson)
6:40pm: The Nearby Galaxies Survey (Christine Wilson)
6:55pm: The JCMT Legacy Archive (Sarah Graves)

EAO Pilot Science
7:05pm: Highlights from Taiwan (Sheng-Yuan Liu)
7:15pm: Highlights from China (Yu Gao)
7:25pm: Highlights from Korea (Woojin Kwon)

Instrument Directions for JCMT:
7:35pm – 8:00pm: Panel discussion and question and answer session on future instrument upgrades and new instrument concepts.

First Day of Operations

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It is with great enthusiasm that the East Asian Observatory (EAO) announces its first day of operations of the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT). The JCMT is the largest astronomical telescope in the world designed to operate in the sub-millimetre wavelength region of the spectrum. EAO is now in charge of JCMT operations in partnership with the UK and Canadian research communities.

Paul Ho the Director General of the East Asian Observatory said “It is a great opportunity for the East Asian Observatory to take over the operation of JCMT which is an excellent facility with extremely powerful instrumentation. Many of our astronomers in East Asia have long been involved in pursuing the most important problems in astronomy by utilizing the amazing telescopes on top of Mauna Kea. It is a great privilege for us to be able to work at the best site for ground based astronomy in the Northern Hemisphere. For all of us at the JCMT, we look forward to an exciting future in continuing to deliver frontier science to our communities.”

EAO would like to thank the people of Hawaii for allowing our astronomers to work on top of one of the most beautiful places on earth.

JCMT_Transfer_small_038

The JCMT handover signing: Back row left to right: Jun Yan, Director, National Astronomical Observatories of China, Dr Guenther Hasinger, Director, Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii, Professor Gary Davis, former Director of the Joint Astronomy Centre. Front row left to right: Dr Paul Ho, Director General, East Asian Observatory, Professor Matt Platz , Assistant Chancellor for Academic Affairs, University of Hawaii, Professor John Womersley, Chief Executive STFC. (Credit: Hollyn Johnson/Professor Gary Davis/STFC)

As a memento of this transfer Will Montgomerie, an operator at the JCMT, has released this beautiful night sky time-lapse montage featuring the Telescope:

www.vimeo.com/williammontgomerie/jcmtstarlapse

The Science and Technology Facilities Council of the UK have also issued their own statement about this occasion. The statement can be found here.