At the May 2001 Board meeting, one of the decisions to help save staff effort was to suspend the production of the normal `glossy bound' Annual Report and replace it, on a trial basis, with a downloadable web-based Report, which you find here. This Report contains links to the standard `boilerplate' of the JCMT and its rules of operation that featured in previous Reports. Science articles and more detailed descriptions of the facility operations and development programmes for users will now be concentrated in the expanded bi-annual Newsletters. This Report will predominately be an audit of the year's operations and financial management.

The JCMT reached a major milestone with 100 refereed publications appearing in 2000. This is a fantastic achievement and a significant increase on the publication output for the previous year. However, for the users this was a very frustrating year, mainly due to the very poor weather conditions that prevailed throughout much of the time. In spite of this, the completion of some important SCUBA scan-mapping programmes represented another important step forward in scientific delivery. Indeed, a report at the end of the year for the citation index in the USA for late 1999 revealed two SCUBA papers in the top-ten, an amazing demonstration of the huge impact this instrument has made.

While the facility receivers were far from perfect, upgrades and refurbishments continue to see improvements in performance and reliability. A major item during the year for operations was the resignation of two further long-standing Telescope System Specialists. This caused a major hiatus in the operations during the recruitment process and in May the JCMT Board approved an experiment of support astronomers undertaking the roles of TSS. This helped to minimise the resulting loss of observing time through the restriction of some nights to 12- rather than the normal 16-hour operation.

On the Development front, very good progress was made on ACSIS and HARP and the future looks very positive with the latest developments on the replacement instrument for SCUBA, SCUBA-2. The project plan for this was finalised, with the UKATC being Prime Contractor and the next generation monolithic detector arrays being produced by NIST (Boulder) and the University of Edinburgh. The success of SCUBA-2 however had its downside for the JCMT operations, with the Telescope Manager, Dr Wayne Holland resigning to take up the post of Project Scientist for this exciting new instrument. This caused yet another management reorganisation, and the Board approved the appointment of an Associate Director, who would take over the tasks of Telescope Manager including responsibility for all instrumentation. Dr Per Friberg was appointed to this position. Progress continues to be slower than hoped for on the link to the SMA, but the MOU should be agreed in 2001.

Overall this year could be seen as a transition year, between the operations of the past, and plans for the future. In these, the facility will be more tightly funded, and savings from general operations may be transferred to support future development. However, these savings should not come at the expense of facility reliability and the fault rate continued to cause concern to the staff in Hawaii as well as the users and JCMT Board. A number of meetings have served to focus on overcoming the problems, but staff turnover and loss of `corporate memory' is undoubtedly making achieving this more difficult. Focus on staff turnover continued to fail to find a single cause for this, and indeed although staff turnover to other facilities has been occurring, this is not an isolated problem for the JCMT.

One of the main underlying themes of the year was to consolidate the project work and to ensure some of these long-standing operational projects were completed. Attempting to undertake projects with the competing and over-riding requirement for operations is always difficult, but a sharper focus and reduced projects should enable the facility to make inroads on a number of them in 2001. The Observation Management Project is a crucial project for the support of queue-scheduled flexible observing and has been dogged by lack of effort. However, this was revitalised late in the year following the reorganisation of the JAC software and computing support. The theme of 2001 will be to address the quality control of the instrumentation and provide better tools for observers at the telescope and post-hoc for data analysis.

Towards the end of the year, PPARC initiated a requirement that if the UK should join ESO, it is likely that there needs to be significant savings in the ground-based area. This means existing facilities and so the JCMT was asked to come up with a draft savings plan for post-2005. With the desired move to wide-field programmes following the delivery of HARP-B and SCUBA-2, there is potential for savings post 2006. This also includes the planned ability to undertake observing remotely from Hale Pohaku, without the support of a TSS in order to maximise observing time for reduced cost. Needless to say, this will be an area that is expected to continue to attract significant management effort through 2001.

Science output continued to be exciting. SCUBA has become a tour do force overall and two surveys showed the huge impact it has made. During the latter part of 1999, two SCUBA papers were in the top-ten of all cited papers in North America, a tremendous achievement. This was surpassed by a recent study by Georges Meylan, STSci, which showed that in terms of impact, SCUBA was second only to the HST, beating the Keck Observatory and all other ground and space facilities, let alone any single instruments (see table).
 
 
 
 

Amongst the highlights noted in 2000 were the completion of the SCUBA 850/450 map of the Galactic Centre regime by Pierce-Price et al. The truly spectacular maps of the thermal dust continuum emission give an unbiased picture of the temperature weighted column-density of material, and hence enable the total masses of the molecular clouds to be derived and the details of individual cloud structures to be investigated.

Large-scale SCUBA mapping was again the theme of D. Johnstone et al., who obtained a 700 square arcminute map of the star-forming complex Rho Ophiuchi. The sensitivity and spatial resolution of the data allows for an unprecedented analysis of the small scale, clumped structure with combined dust and gas masses down to below one hundredth of a solar mass. With this degree of precision, the process of star formation finally became directly observable, revealing both the mass and the size of the clumps from which the stars form. The Canadian Consortium for Star Formation led by George Mitchell made spectacular inroads in their programme with a submillimetre dust and gas analysis of the Orion B molecular cloud. An 800 square arcminute SCUBA 850 map formed the basis for the study, onto which molecular gas observations using RxB3 were added. Sixty-seven discrete continuum sources were identified, with temperatures ranges from 20K to 80K. The gas-to-dust ratio was found to vary substantially between the different sub-regions, with CO freeze-out onto grains being apparent in some areas but not others, the reason for which remains unexplained. A number of other exciting programmes of star formation provided highlights for the September Newsletter.

Moving to more evolved objects, Greaves et al. obtained a SCUBA continuum polarisation map of the Crab Nebula. This was taken using the scan-map technique, one of the first uses of this method with the polarimeter. The resulting map is indeed spectacular. The SCUBA data show the highest percentage polarizations so far and may give the best high-resolution picture of the magnetic field. The polarization is remarkably uniform across the main part of the synchrotron-emitting nebula, running along the long axis of the structure (the jet axis). However, a major deviation occurs where the vectors appear to circle the cavity north-west of the bright core, confirming a link between the physical and magnetic structures.

In the extragalactic field, the SCUBA deep-field observations continued to be all the rage, with more detailed follow-up and more surveys at various depths and sizes being commenced. Ivison and numerous colleagues undertook SCUBA 850 imaging of high-redshift radio galaxies with SCUBA and serendipitous detections were plentiful. Indeed, at one point it appeared that the rate of detections seemed to far exceed those of blank-field surveys, and it quickly became apparent that there might be an over-density of submm sources in the fields of distant radio galaxies. Indeed, biased galaxy-formation theories predict that massive galaxies at high redshifts should act as ?signposts? to high-density environments that subsequently evolve into the cores of the richest clusters seen at the present day. These regions are expected to be characterised by over-densities of young galaxies, probably including a population of dusty, interaction-driven starbursts; the progenitors of massive cluster ellipticals.

Therefore, it seems quite plausible that the mapping of high-redshift AGN has revealed a population of clustered submm galaxies. Very deep 850 SCUBA searches were made in the fields of half-a-dozen radio galaxies and quasars at z ~ 4, revealing an order-of-magnitude over-density of luminous submm galaxies compared to typical fields. The likelihood of finding such an over-density in random fields is <0.002. If the redshifts are the same as the `signpost' galaxies then they have bolometric luminosities, >10<sup>13</sup> solar luminosities, which implies star-formation rates consistent with those required to form a massive galaxy in a fraction of a Gyr. Identifying these new SCUBA sources continues to prove tricky, requiring extremely deep infrared and radio imaging. When all the data are combined, the `photometric' redshifts plus some very red infrared objects strongly suggests the redshifts are all greater than 2.8, and very probably the same as the `target' AGN. This opens up a whole new area of study; the link between density enhancements in the early Universe, clustering, AGN activity and extremely heavily obscured dust emitting submillimetre galaxies.

Just for fun, SCUBA was also used to map the Moon during periods of exceptionally wet atmospheric conditions in Director's Time. (It needs to be so very wet to allow the horribly bright Moon not to saturate the detectors even at lowest gain). A number of phases were mapped, including a partial lunar eclipse. Craters and Maria are clearly revealed in the images, and the comparison with the normal optical picture obtained from reflected light becomes highly instructive regarding surface properties.
 

2000 was one of general frustration, both for the users and for the staff. This has been for three main reasons: the water vapour content above Mauna Kea has continued to be very poor, indeed one of the worst years ever; the lack of TSSs due to resignations has resulted in some `blackout' periods from the ensuing 12-hour nights; there have been failures of the facility that were disappointing. On the other hand, the completion and release into service of the new telescope control system (TCS) in August and the completion of the active surface control electronics has been especially welcomed and provided a boost to morale all-round.

The extended periods of poor weather eventually led to the introduction of an upper-limit CSO tau value for observing with RxB3 and RxA3 in order to reduce unnecessary additional work for support astronomers in obtaining data for fallback programmes taken in very poor conditions.

The fault-loss continued to be unacceptably high and there have been numerous meetings to focus on the causes and to attempt to eliminate them. This was dominated by problems with instrumentation and major failures of facility equipment, notably the secondary mirror unit that failed twice (from unrelated causes).

A serious safety violation occurred at the JCMT in May, which had major repercussions for the entire Observatory. The resulting investigation led to the introduction of a new set of policies and procedures for TSSs and those undertaking day-work, including a new certification process for TSSs.

SCUBA continues to dominate the applications for time and the resulting allocations. The fixed-filter (850/450) mode continues after discussions at the ITAC. SCUBA suffered two unplanned warm-ups that lost significant time; the reason for one of these is known and procedures have been changed to eliminate this particular risk. Noise performance has been generally excellent and the release of the new calibration information is a real highlight. Good work has been achieved with the polarimeter.

RxA3 was returned to service following its cryogenic failure and extensive repair in early August and is working satisfactorily. The question of whether to replace the mixer, which has a hump in the middle of the pass-band, is being addressed. Following its overhaul by HIA early in the year, the fault-loss for RxB3 has improved noticeably over the period, although there is still some work to be done in getting this to be a very reliable and work-horse receiver. Again, RxW continues to see little use. When it is scheduled the weather is often poor, even for extended flexible blocks, but good progress has been made on set-up using relative pointing from RxB3. A new block-mode of allocating time on RxW will be tested for semester 01A.

The two holography receivers, RxH2 and RxH3 have both had problems due to a variety of causes. Work on finally commissioning RxH3 has been delayed due to, amongst other things, teething troubles with the new TCS. SPIFI was totally wiped out by weather in May and there was only one night in September (the last) when the weather was adequate for observing and on that occasion the telescope secondary mirror unit failed! The Bonn receiver was also wiped out by poor weather in May, and while the October run did not do much better, but at least some good data were obtained.

Extensive pointing and tracking experiments have revealed some peculiarities around transit that are still not understood, and work continues to track down the problems. The effects are relatively stable and have been taken out in software and so are transparent to users. The surface continues to be in good shape.

Software support continues to be in short supply to solve problems and complete on-going projects and this has been the subject of extensive internal meetings. Excellent progress has been made on the Observatory Control System (OCS) which is akin to the glue that links everything together and which is critical (along with the delayed Observation Management Project) for the arrival of ACSIS.

Following the resignation of the Telescope Manager and subsequent discussions with staff, the Board supported the change of JCMT management by elimination of the Telescope Manager post and subsuming most of the duties in an Associate Director, Per Friberg. Since September, new staff duties have been agreed and the management structure of the support astronomers revised, including a SCUBA support group under Iain Coulson. The Director assumed direct responsibility for overseeing the Development Fund to reduce some of the workload on Per Friberg.

As a morale boosting exercise for support astronomers, encouragement for research by conference participation and dissemination of new results has been augmented by the award of $500 to all those who have an active research programme. These funds have been provided by PPARC as part of the ?In-house research? and it would be detrimental for morale not to allocate these to Canadian or Netherlands researchers. The staffing turnover continues to remain high, which seems to be a more prevalent feature for all the observatories on Mauna Kea.

• Mary Fuka, Senior Software Engineer, retired after a distinguished 11 years of service at the JCMT, on May 4^th.

• The JCMT Telescope Manager, Wayne Holland, resigned on September 1^st to move to the UKATC as Project Scientist for SCUBA-2.

• The Telescope Scheduler and TSS manager, Graeme Watt, resigned on September 15^th, to take up a career role in PPARC headquarters, Swindon. Graeme had been with the JCMT since its inception apart from a brief return to Edinburgh in the mid- 1990?s.

• Jeff Cox and Rusty Luthe resigned as JCMT TSSs in June and July respectively after two decades of excellent service. Jeff moved to Gemini South and Rusty moved to the CFHT.
• Teresa Dorward (PPARC) left the JAC in October to move to La Palma as a finance assistant and was replaced by Chelo Barreto Gomez (PPARC) who arrived in October from La Palma.

• Three new Telescope System Specialists were recruited: Scott Mikkelson arrived on January 3^rd, Jim Hoge arrived on May 15^th and Jonathan Kemp joined the JCMT on June 5^th.

• Nick Jessop joined the JCMT as a support astronomer from the University of Lisbon on March 27^th.

• Kynan DeLorey joined the JAC at the beginning of June to work in the computer group and Mathew Rippa was recruited as a junior software engineer on August 14^th.

• Ken Brown joined the JCMT on September 5^th as a senior instrument technician.

• Tomas Chylek joined the JAC on September 18^th as a senior mechanical engineer.
• Craig Walther joined the JAC on March 28^th as the manager of instrumentation and telescope software.

(JAC indicates shared ~50/50 between JCMT and UKIRT)

Good progress has been made on ACSIS although the Critical Design Review (CDR) planned for June slipped to December. This was very successful, although lack of a complete end-to-end system meant that it was not quite at CDR. A major hold-up has been identified in the fabrication of the Down Converter Modules and the IF. The project is now undergoing a major re-costing and re-scheduling following CDR and it is now expected that delivery will not take place until late spring or summer of 2002. However, apart from the delay and cost over-run, the project is looking very good on the technical side and should still be delivered well in time for HARP-B. A very positive outcome of the ACSIS CDR was the focus on the software interfaces, which involve a large number of groups and also impinges on the design of the Observatory Control System and Observatory Management Project. The former has now been incorporated fully into the ACSIS project at the UKATC and the JAC.

HARP-B is making excellent progress and had a very successful Instrument Design Review in November. The contract for SIS-device provision for HARP-B was signed with DIMES earlier in the year but lack of progress on fabrication of junctions after the move of the lab was becoming critical by the end of the year. The project has reported a projected date for delivery of July 2003. This is a slippage of four months and is the first registered for this project.

Progress continues to be slow on the SMA project, understandably due to their own pressure for completion deadlines. However, the fibres have now been spliced and a revised project plan is under discussion with the SMA in an effort to try and get some realistic planning into the project.

Excellent progress was made in Hawaii on working through the project plan and costings for the new wide-field continuum camera, SCUBA-2. A major and expensive part of this exercise was the contractual negotiations regarding the production of the arrays by NIST. The contract provides carefully selected break-points for withdrawal that minimise the degree of financial risk.

It was not possible to hold a CoDR for the proposed high-frequency heterodyne camera, CHAMP-D, and this has been postponed until some time in the future.
 

The main facility project over the period, the Active Surface Control, saw success in the `datuming' of the limit switches. This took place in August and marked the completion of the electrical side of the project.

A major milestone for the JCMT was the successful commissioning of the new TCS in late August. Initial niggling problems were quickly overcome and it is now very reliable, offering the basis for efficiency improvements downstream. On the other hand, extensive work by Nick Rees, who has shouldered the responsibility and is personally responsible for the success of completing the TCS, continues to reveal just how complex the interaction of the TCS with the instrument control software has `grown' over the years. Firmin Oliveira worked extensively on this project and deserves congratulations and thanks.
 

Due to the renting of HP rooms by those facilities that had not purchased rooms of their own, a significant income was obtained in this financial year, which is the reason for the large underspend. This is not expected to continue into FY01/02 as these facilities have now purchased rooms (four from the JCMT). The staffing line shows a notable reduction as expected due to planned savings through freezes on positions (two TSSs and one support astronomer).

JCMT Internationally Shared Operations Budget: Outturn 00/01 details

Section 1. Mauna Kea $k Section 5. JCMT Fellowship $k

1.1 Utilities, Telephones 109.8 5.1 JCMT Fellowship 63.5

1.2 Telescope Maint 95.7 Sub-Total 5 63.5

1.3 Building Maint 32.5

1.4 Road Maint/snow clearing 29.5

1.5 Cryogens 187.6 Section 6. IPMG Support

6. Receiver Maintenance 34.0

1.8 Remote Operations Project 18.7 Sub-Total 6. 18.9

1. HP Costs 69.6
2. Visitors Centre, Emerg Serv 15.9

1. Office Equipment 22.6
2. Hilo Telecomms/utilities 82.0

5. Administration 1.8

3.1.7 Safety and First Aid 13.5

8. Lab and Handling Equipment 11.2

11. Library 11.4

3.2 Vehicle Proc and Maint 68.9

1. Computer Systems 73.5
2. Computer Communications 20.1
3. Instrument Projects 23.2
4. Observing Management Project 4.6

4.2 RCUH Staff & Recruit 1,962.0 (gross)

4.2.1 Director 133.5 (gross)

2. Cons/Travel/Conf/Training 92.6

($k)

RxA3 upgrade HIA -12.6⁽¹⁾

SIS Junctions DIMES 63.3

Optics Design Maynooth 7.3

SCUBA 2 UKATC 585.2⁽²⁾

SCUBA 2 JAC 14.1⁽³⁾

Active surface control project JAC 4.6

RxH3 JAC 4.4

ACSIS HIA 0 ⁽³⁾

ACSIS UKATC 18.2

ACSIS JAC 24.5

RFTM JAC 5.1

OCS UKATC 26.3

HARP-B MRAO 65.6

HARP-B UKATC 60.5

HARP-B HIA 27.5

HARP-B JAC 0

Instrument Programme Travel JAC 7.3

TOTAL 901.4

⁽¹⁾ Repaid from previous `float'.

⁽²⁾ Includes staff effort of 2.8 dsy at £54 each charged to the Development Fund under the
new rules applied to SCUBA-2.

⁽³⁾ Invoice received for $25.046k but HIA already have a previous `float' of $30.224k.