THE UNITED KINGDOM INFRARED TELESCOPE
ANNUAL REPORT
2000

1. The United Kingdom Infrared Telescope

Situated at an altitude of 4194m above sea level near the summit of Mauna Kea, the 3.8-metre UK Infrared Telescope remains the world's largest dedicated infrared telescope. UKIRT is owned and operated by the UK Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC), through the Joint Astronomy Centre (JAC), Hilo, under the oversight of the UKIRT Board. Apart from an automatic 15% allocation to the University of Hawaii, time on UKIRT is awarded in peer-reviewed open competition to the world community by PPARC's Panel for Allocation of Telescope Time.

The purpose of UKIRT is to support high-quality fundamental observational research in infrared astronomy. It does this by providing to its user community astronomical instrumentation maintained at the state-of-the-art through a vigorous programme of instrument development in the UK, by continually improving the performance and observational efficiency of its existing instruments and the telescope, by providing its users with comprehensive support of the highest quality, and by identifying opportunities to upgrade its existing instrumentation.

The year 2000, which saw UKIRT's 21st birthday, also saw the full implementation of the ORAC control system for all UKIRT instruments (present and planned). The fundamental aim of this software is to improve the observing efficiency of UKIRT, and it has been every bit as successful in this as the project team - distributed between JAC and the UK Astronomy Technology Centre in Edinburgh - could have hoped.

UKIRT has been increasing its light grasp and spatial resolution through a comprehensive programme of upgrades, combined with an instrumentation programme tailored to the telescope's performance. The instrument suite will always be characterized by high throughput and efficiency, and UKIRT's imaging and spectroscopy capabilities remain highly competitive on Mauna Kea. The ORAC software gives users a 21st-century interface to control the telescope and instrumentation.

The final component of the UKIRT Upgrades programme (apart from the UIST project which will deliver a state-of-the-art imager/spectrometer in 2001/2) is the cooling of the primary mirror. First results were obtained with this system and look extremely encouraging, implying a great degree of control over UKIRT's intrinsic seeing contribution.

As a thermally-optimised telescope, UKIRT has long awaited the arrival of its thermal imager/spectrometer (Michelle) from the UKATC. 2000 saw major efforts being made to push this most challenging project to completion, with a confident expectation of delivery in 2001.

The equivalent number of staff working at UKIRT in 2000 was approximately 30.