Message from the Director

Against this very positive background the main business of the November meeting of the JCMT Advisory Panel was to consider a comprehensive package of costed options I had prepared, the outcome of which would determine the future programme of the development of the facility and its new instrumentation. The members of the Panel consulted their constituents prior to the meeting and, a lively discussion ensued, after which the Panel supported all the proposals and crucially, provided a scientific prioritisation for the proposed developments. The members were enthusiastic about the developments, especially the moves toward sub-arcsecond astronomy with potential future collaborations with the Smithsonian Submillimeter Array Interferometer (SMA) and the prospect of a JCMT heterodyne array programme. There was a remarkable degree of agreement within the Panel and I was very happy with the outcome. On the basis of this prioritised list, I formulated a five-year development plan, which I put to the JCMT Board for endorsement at its January meeting.

The Board carefully considered these proposals in the light of the available funding and I can inform the community that they fully supported the proposed plan of facility and instrument developments. This sets in motion the planning for the future long-term development of the JCMT, thereby ensuring that it remains at the very forefront of scientific excellence. I am grateful to the Board for their very positive support, in spite of apparent funding uncertainties all round at this time. Because of the finite nature of the existing Development Fund, the Board paid particular attention to the work to be undertaken during the next three years. The preliminary recommendations of the UK's Optical- Infrared-Millimetre review include a statement of the intention to undertake a major review of the JCMT in three years time. This will give users ample opportunity to demonstrate the fantastic and world-beating new science to be obtained with our three new instruments, especially SCUBA. We have already broken the publication record (see later) and I am absolutely confident that the JCMT will come out of this review with flying colours and with this in mind, three years hence is an opportune time to take stock of where we are and proceed with the next phase of implementation of the long-term development plan. In the meantime, we start with a broad attack on all the main headings of the plan.

The long-term development plan can be grouped under five main headings, each having a specific and mainly scientific thrust. These headings are: improvements in observational efficiency; a programme of sub-arcsecond astronomy; a heterodyne submillimetre array programme; innovative new projects; general facility refurbishment and upgrades. This list brings instrument and facility projects together, and most of the areas have very specific astronomical goals. To obtain a better grasp of the projects, the list below shows a more detailed breakdown.

Improvements in observational efficiency

1. A continuing programme of upgrades to the current and future instruments including the conversion of RxB3i to RxA3, (a replacement receiver for RxA2) and the conversion of RxC2 to a new 850 GHz receiver to be called RxE.

2. The continued development of SIS devices.

3. The development of mixer technology.

4. Investigations of new modes of telescope scheduling and remote operation.

5. A new telescope control system.

6. Improvements to the telescope surface.

7. Computing upgrades.

1. Improvements to the JCMT-CSO interferometer.

2. Collaborations with the Smithsonian Millimetre Array (SMA).

3. Provision of an array receiver for interferometry (RxSMA).

4. VLBI.

1. Provision of a new correlator (MIDAS).

2. Production of the first camera for the array at B-band (SWIFT).

3. Provision of new cameras and an enlarged backend.

General facility refurbishment and upgrades

1. Provision of new 24-bit led encoders.

2. Regrouting and levelling of the azimuth track.

(i) to continue fully with the programme of efficiency upgrades as listed above. However we are currently undertaking a detailed investigation of the costs associated with the possibility of remote operation and the potential scope for improvements in the telescope surface. These costs will be brought back to the November 1995 Board meeting for further planning consideration;

(ii) the sub-arcsecond astronomy programme will commence with experiments into phase retrieval to be undertaken using the JCMT- CSO interferometer, along with the provision of trenches and optical fibres for the eventual connection to the SMA. I will be working with the Smithsonian Institute with regard to formulating collaborative proposals to be considered by the JCMT Board. VLBI will be kept on hold for the time being and I will retain a watching brief, especially on the outcome of the Haystack group's request for NSF funding to become the co-ordinating centre for mm VLBI. This is a move I very much welcome and I hope their proposal is supported;

(iii) the exciting heterodyne array programme will get under way with investment in the prototyping the new MIDAS correlator along with extensive R&D studies for the front-end B-band camera (SWIFT) and associated optical systems. It has been decided that the first array will be a 16-channel B-band camera. We expect to commence the final construction phase of the camera and production of the MIDAS correlator in three years;

(iv) the first round of innovative projects was very successful and we expect to be looking to issue an announcement of opportunity for new innovative projects in about a year's time; (v) in terms of the general facility developments, the new encoders have already been ordered and the work required for the levelling of the azimuth track will be investigated over the coming months. All told, a dynamic, challenging and exciting future for the JCMT.

Turning to JCMT operations, I reflect on mixed success over the last semester but overall I am satisfied with the general trend of improvements. The statistics show the appalling weather loss of primary programmes, dramatically demonstrating the need to move to some form of flexible scheduling. November was a disaster, but thankfully December had excellent weather during more or less the entire month, which was a great boon both to observers and ourselves as we had fortunately scheduled a significant amount of engineering time for telescope and instrument characterisation. This brings me to my major concern during the semester, the poor state of the telescope beam, which remained for a number of months. Although the telescope homology problems were cured in early July, failures in the holographic system meant that the primary was left in a rather poor state after this work. To compound this, the beam became considerably worse at the end of September, now believed to be due to a distortion of the secondary mirror. Throughout October the beam was unacceptably poor, until the primary was finally re- adjusted in early November. However, the really good news is that the telescope is now performing extremely well. The focal length change, the removal of the 'out-of-homology' variations and the recent surface settings have given us a telescope with beam shapes, homologous performance and efficiencies which are better than ever.

One of the main thrusts of the drive to improve the quality of the facility over the past six months relates to the quality of the heterodyne instrumentation performance and their calibration. We set in place a system of checks to achieve this and I am again very pleased to note that the production of the spectral standards atlas is now almost complete (at least for those sources in the currently observable RA range), and the 'facts sheets' are now displayed at the telescope, HP, JAC and on the WWW. The start of shift checks and the standard spectra have shown that the receivers are in general well behaved, but occasionally they have problems (see note by Bill Dent in the previous Newsletter) and our current feeling is that these are probably due to tuning difficulties.

On the staffing side, it is with great regret that I report the resignation of Dr Adrian Russell, the Head of the JCMT Instrumentation Programme Management Group. He moves on to become the UK Gemini Project Manager. Adrian has done a brilliant job since his appointment and the strength and great promise of the JCMT future instrument development programme owes much to his individual talents, skills and abilities. He will be sorely missed and his departure has forced me to undertake a management reorganisation which has just been approved by the JCMT Board. I am now actively seeking a replacement for Adrian. The new post of Head of JCMT Instrumentation will be based in Hawaii and as well as overseeing the future instrumentation programme, will also be responsible for the maintenance, repair and quality control of the current instruments on the JCMT. Over the course of the 1995/96 financial year, I intend to transfer all the international JCMT posts at ROE to Hawaii and with the departure of Dr Chris Purton back to Canada in the summer, I have persuaded Dr Graeme Watt to return to Hawaii for a third tour. He will take over all scheduling matters from Chris and will take responsibility for the implementation of flexible scheduling.