Category Archives: Uncategorized

This March EAO/JCMT staff celebrated our second birthday. We wish all our EAO friends a very productive and happy 2017!

– photo courtesy of Michael Hoenig.

– 2017/03/23

Congratulations to Harriet Parsons who was nominated for 2016 Employee of the Year award. All nominees were awarded at a lunch on March 6th 2017. To see the video for all the RCUH nominees click here.

– 2017/03/06

For the second successive summer, we have experienced unusually poor weather at the start of the B-semester, and we are facing a period of 7 weeks without SCUBA-2 in October and November, as it undergoes important maintenance. The combination of these events has severely impacted our supply of approved band-3/4 heterodyne programs.

We therefore invite new proposals to observe targets with 20h < RA < 04h with HARP and/or RxA, for immediate assessment, approval and execution.

See here for details; where the ‘Semester’ in question is called ’16X’.

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.

This Call for Proposals closes on the 11th of October 2016. We welcome submissions now.

– 2016/09/27

SCUBA-2 was recently returned to service after a 5-week-long absence due to a partial cryogen blockage. It has been returned to full service, despite requiring alternative operating conditions because of a problem diagnosed with one of the Pulse Tube Coolers. This issue has left the instrument filters at temperatures that are fractionally warmer than normal. SCUBA-2 operation will be maintained until October 5, when it will be removed from the telescope to replace the PTCs and also install new optical filters which we expect to improve the instrument performance. SCUBA-2 return to service is expected on or before November 24.

We apologize for the inconvenience and will keep you updated as to our progress.

– 2016/08/03

For potential PIs who wish to submit a POL-2 proposal for semester 16B (deadline 2016-03-16 01:00 UT), we have now prepared a brief guide page with details on the estimated sensitivity and observing mode of the instrument, at:

http://www.eaobservatory.org/jcmt/instrumentation/continuum/scuba-2/pol-2/

The Integration Time Calculator in Hedwig has also been updated. When performing a SCUBA-2 calculation, you can now select the POL-2 scan pattern POL-2 Daisy, to get a POL-2 time or noise estimate.

Please do remember, the 16B call for proposal closes in only 15 days!

We welcoming Jessica Dempsey to the role of Deputy Director of the JCMT. In addition to this we are proud to announce she has been also just been recognized with a Women Who Mean Business award for “Women to Watch”.

Jessica Dempsey receiving the award for “Women to Watch” March 2016.

Jessica Dempsey winner of “Women to Watch” 2016.

– 2016/03/01

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

Semester 16B runs from 01 August 2016 to 31 January 2017. You can reach the proposal handling system, Hedwig,  and find complete details of this Call at:

https://proposals.eaobservatory.org/

New in 16A: the likely availability of POL-2. If you are interested
in doing polarimetry with SCUBA-2 please contact us at

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 16B Call for Proposals closes on the 15th of March 2016.