Maps and Results from the SCUBA Public Archive

The Submillimetre Common User Bolometer Array (SCUBA) was one of the flagship instruments of the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT), a 15 m diameter submillimetre observatory atop Mauna Kea, HI. Since 1997, SCUBA was used regularly to observe simultaneously the 850 micron and 450 micron continuum emission from a variety of astronomical phenomena, including cold dust in Galactic star-forming regions, at respective resolutions of 14 arcsec FWHM and 7.5 arcsec FWHM. Cryogenic problems regrettably cut short SCUBA's continued operation in 2005. A successor instrument, SCUBA-2, is planned for installation on JCMT in late 2006. To maximize the scientific relevance of SCUBA, we have re-reduced all 850 micron and 450 micron jiggle-map and scan-map data (of objects outside the Solar System) within the SCUBA archive, located at the Canadian Astronomical Data Centre (CADC). The SCUBA data, totaling 28,007 separate observations, consist of all those publicly available as of August 2005. A total of 3080 maps at either 850 micron or 450 micron, each 1.2 deg x 1.2 deg in extent, were made using a matrix inversion technique and the most up-to-date facility determinations of extinction and flux conversion. Specifically, data at the same location but from several epochs were combined into a single map to maximize sensitivities. Common map artifacts were removed via flattening and edge-clipping algorithms. An automatic object identification algorithm was used to compile new catalogues of objects detected by SCUBA; the 850 micron catalogue alone contains 2820 objects. Here we present preview images and results produced from this effort, demonstrating the legacy of SCUBA. All newly reduced maps and the catalogues will soon be made available for public access via the CADC (http://cadc.hia.nrc.ca).NRC publication: Ye