Press Releases
For a full list of press releases form the JAC click here.

		'Cosmic GDP' crashes 97% as star formation slumps: An international team of astronomers has established that the rate of formation of new stars in the Universe is now only 1/30th of its peak and that this decline is only set to continue. Image credit: Chandra / NASA / NOAO / KIPAC.
		Measuring the universe's 'exit door': For the first time, an international team, led by researchers at MIT's Haystack Observatory, has measured the radius of a black hole. Using radio dishes in Hawaii (including the JCMT), Arizona and California to create a telescope array called the 'Event Horizon Telescope' (EHT) that can see details 2,000 times finer than what's visible to the Hubble Space Telescope. Image credit: NASA and Ann Field (Space Telescope Science Institute) & Avery E. Broderick (Perimeter Institute & University of Waterloo).
		UKIRT discovers 'impossible' binary stars: A team of astronomers have used the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) on Hawaii to discover four pairs of stars that orbit each other in less than 4 hours. Until now it was thought that such close-in binary stars could not exist. The new discoveries come from the telescope's Wide Field Camera (WFCAM) Transit Survey, and appear in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Image credit: J. Pinfield.
		"Once in a Lifetime Opportunity" Science Planned on the JCMT During the Transit of Venus: The James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, is one of the few telescopes in the world capable of directly observing the planet Venus as it transits across the face of the Sun, and it plans to take full advantage of this last opportunity for 115 years. Image credit: Pat Durrell / JAC.
		Dusty stellar nurseries from the dark side of a galaxy: The first result from the JCMT Nearby Galaxy Legacy Survey is a stunning image of the galaxy M66 as it appears at the sub-mm wavelengths. The image shows sub-mm emission detected by SCUBA-2 overlaid on an image of the galaxy taken in visible light. Credit: VLT/ESO, JAC, G. Bendo.
		New SCUBA-2 camera reveals wild youth of the universe: The SCUBA-2 camera has taken a snap shot of what the early Universe looked like over 10 billion years ago. The seven sources identified correspond to massive, clumpy, violently star-forming disc galaxies. In the images to the right we see images of the same region observed by the Herschel space telescope (left), SCUBA-2 (middle) and Hubble (right). Credit: ROE / JAC
		Revolutionary new camera reveals the dark side of the Universe: A composite image of the Whirlpool Galaxy (also known as M51) taken by the new SCUBA-2 camera on the JCMT. The green image is from the Hubble Space Telescope and shows the optical wavelength. The submillimetre light detected by SCUBA-2 is shown in red (850 microns) and blue (450 microns). The Whirlpool Galaxy lies at an estimated distance of 31 million light years from Earth in the constellation Canes Venatici. Credit: JAC / UBC / NASA
		The most distant quasar: Both headache and opportunity: An international team of astronomers announced the discovery of the most distant known supermassive black hole, seen as a luminous quasar caused by gas falling into the black hole. The discovery came to light using data from an ongoing infrared sky survey being conducted at the UKIRT and critical follow-up confirmation observations with the Gemini North telescope. Image credit: Gemini Observatory / AURA by Lynette Cook

FOR TEACHERS

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SCUBA-2 Image Gallery (NEW)
JCMT Newsletter
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JAC Annual Report 2009/10 (PDF, 20.0 MB)
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