SCUBA: A common-user submillimetre camera operating on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope

1998/09/10 by W. S. Holland, Wayne S. Holland, E. I. Robson +19 · 39 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Adaptive optics and wavefront sensing #Astronomical Observations and Instrumentation #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #astro-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1046/j.1365-8711.1999.02111.x

published as Mon.Not.Roy.Astron.Soc. 303 (1999) 659 · 15 pages, 15 figures, accepted for Monthly Notices of RAS

arxiv created 1998/09/10 · openalex publication_date 1999/03/11 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04

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 microns to 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 and user interface, performance figures on the telescope, and present a sample of the exciting new results that have revolutionised submillimetre astronomy.

Cited by

• Infrared Spectral Energy Distributions of Nearby Galaxies
• The SCUBA Half-Degree Extragalactic Survey -- I. Survey motivation, design and data processing
• Gas and Dust in Protogalaxies
• An excess of submillimetre sources towards z 1 clusters
• A SCUBA survey of bright-rimmed clouds
• The Effect of Noise in Dust Emission Maps on the Derivation of Column Density, Temperature, and Emissivity Spectral Index
• THE LOCAL ENVIRONMENT OF THE FU-ORIONIS-LIKE OBJECTS AR 6A AND 6B
• The circumstellar environments of high-mass protostellar objects
• Using SCUBA to place upper limits on arcsecond-scale cosmic microwave background anisotropies at 850 m
• Searching for signs of triggered star formation toward IC 1848
• The Physical Scale of the Far‐Infrared Emission in the Most Luminous Submillimeter Galaxies
• THE SPITZER SURVEY OF INTERSTELLAR CLOUDS IN THE GOULD BELT. II. THE CEPHEUS FLARE OBSERVED WITH IRAC AND MIPS
• The detection of dust in the central galaxies of distant cooling-flow clusters
• Resolving the Submillimeter Background: The 850 Micron Galaxy Counts
• Tracing the Mass during Low‐Mass Star Formation. III. Models of the Submillimeter Dust Continuum Emission from Class 0 Protostars
• Bolocam Survey for 1.1 mm Dust Continuum Emission in the c2d Legacy Clouds. II. Ophiuchus
• Millimetre continuum observations of southern massive star formation regions – II. SCUBA observations of cold cores and the dust grain emissivity index (β)
• Estimating the Column Density in Molecular Clouds with Far-Infrared and Submillimeter Emission Maps
• Submillimeter Imaging of the Luminous Infrared Galaxy Pair VV 114
• Expected Submillimeter Emission and Dust Properties of Lyman Break Galaxies at High Redshift
• Understanding the Nature of Optically Faint Radio Sources and Their Connection to the Submillimeter Population
• Gigamasers: the key to the dust-obscured star formation history of the Universe?
• TMC‐1C: An Accreting Starless Core
• First ground-based 200- m observing with THUMPER on JCMT -- sky characterization and planet maps
• SCUBA observations of NGC 1275
• Evolution of Magnetic fields in Bok Globules?
• SCUBA observations of the sources detected in the MAMBO 1200-μm survey
• The nature of faint submillimetre-selected galaxies
• Contribution of starburst mergers at z∼ 1 to the strong evolution of infrared and submillimeter deep surveys
• Interferometric imaging of the high-redshift radio galaxy, 4C 60.07: an SMA,Spitzerand VLA study reveals a binary AGN/starburst
• A 1200-μm MAMBO survey of the GOODS-N field: a significant population of submillimetre dropout galaxies
• A Submillimeter View of Star Formation near the HiiRegion KR 140
• Finding clusters in SZ surveys
• Tracing the Mass during Low‐Mass Star Formation. IV. Observations and Modeling of the Submillimeter Continuum Emission from Class I Protostars
• The Hubble Deep Field North SCUBA Super-map - I. Submillimetre maps, sources and number counts
• Ultraluminous Infrared Galaxies: Atlas of Near‐Infrared Images
• A Submillimeter Search of Nearby Young Stars for Cold Dust: Discovery of Debris Disks around Two Low‐Mass Stars
• First Detection of Millimeter Dust Emission from Brown Dwarf Disks
• First polarimetry results of two candidate high-mass protostellar objects
• James Clerk Maxwell Telescope [wikipedia]