THE SUBMILLIMETRE REVOLUTION: celebrating the legacy of SCUBA and looking forward to the potential of SCUBA-2

The 2006 ROE Workshop on "The Submillimetre Revolution" was a great success celebrating the achievements of SCUBA and looking forward to the potential of SCUBA-2. Monday started off on a nostalgia trip with talks about the history of submm astronomy and the JCMT. How fashions have changed over the past 30 years (who will ever forget the Carnaby Street flares and bouffant hairstyles of the early years...) The history and challenges associated with SCUBA were presented with some classic reminisces such as "Must include some cosmology in the science case..."

Day 2 was largely a showcase for the results from SCUBA over the past 10 years, from resolving the farIR/submm background into ultraluminous dusty galaxies, through the earliest stages of star formation to more advanced techniques like polarimetry. Also presented was what you can do in terms of mining a data archive. The photograph below was taken during tea on the Tuesday afternoon (unfortunately the glorious weather that we had been blessed with for the opening day and a half, deserted us for the more traditional Edinburgh dull skies...)

On Tuesday night we held a very special whisky tasting and banquet at the Scottish Whisky Heritage Centre at the top of the Royal Mile. Even the impromptu fire-alarm during Derek's speech couldn't dampen our spirits (geddit?).

The final day started with talks on debris disks and AGN and went on to describe the SCUBA-2 project (both the history and technical challenges). The afternoon was devoted to science talks on SCUBA-2 with the incredibly exciting survey programme taking the stage.

All in all we think the workshop was an extremely enjoyable event. Many thanks, once again, to everyone for attending!

Wayne Holland (on behalf of the LOC) October 2006.

We have also made available a copy of the announcements and programme for the workshop:

First Announcement

Second Announcement

Workshop Programme

The opportunity was taken on the second day to record the attendees to the event. The thumbnail version of the picture below links to a larger version.

Group Photo