Operations and Maintenance Support for the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope

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The James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) is the largest submillimetre-wave single dish telescope in the world. It is located at an excellent site in Hawai`i and is equipped with two state-of-the-art submillimetre cameras, a 10,000 pixel dual-band continuum camera (SCUBA-2) as well as a 16 pixel 2000 channel spectroscopic camera (HARP). The mapping capabilities of the JCMT are particularly important for two of the most prominent research topics in astronomy today: tracing the formation and evolution of young galaxies in the early universe, and probing the physical conditions in the dense gas that provides the fuel for star formation both in our own Milky Way and in other galaxies near and far. There is excellent synergy between the JCMT with its wide-field mapping capabilities and new telescopes such as the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a powerful new radio array in Chile that began science operations in 2011. Astronomers use the JCMT to find new and interesting objects in the sky and then follow up with high resolution images to study their properties in detail with ALMA. Thus, a relatively small investment in the JCMT enables Canadians to make the best use of our larger investment in ALMA.