Thirty Years Of Astronomical Discovery With Ukirt: The Scientific Achievement Of The United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (astrophysics And Space Science Proceedings 37)

These are the proceedings of an international meeting hosted by the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh, to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the dedication of the UKIRT, the United Kingdom InfraRed Telescope. The volume comprises 31 professional level papers. The first part of the book has 10 thorough reviews of the conception, design and build of the telescope, as well as accounts of some its key instruments such as IRCAM (the common-user infrared camera), CGS4 (the fourth Cooled Grating Spectrometer) and the Wide Field Camera. The second part of the book comprises 14 reviews of scientific achievements during its twenty years of visitor mode operations. The final part of the book is a series of 7 reviews of the results from the multiple surveys being done as part of UKIDSS (UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey). The authors are all experts in their respective fields, for example instrument scientists, operations staff and leading astronomers. Front Matter....Pages i-ix Front Matter....Pages 1-1 The UKIRT Success Story....Pages 3-10 UKIRT – The Project and the Early Years....Pages 11-27 The IRCAM Revolution....Pages 29-38 Continuum Submillimetre Astronomy from UKIRT....Pages 39-51 CGS4: A Breakthrough Instrument....Pages 53-62 The UKIRT Upgrades Programme....Pages 63-74 Operational Innovations....Pages 75-85 The UKIRT Wide-Field Camera....Pages 87-96 Polarimetry at UKIRT....Pages 97-111 UKIRT in the Mid-Infrared....Pages 113-126 Front Matter....Pages 127-127 Thirty Years of Star Formation at UKIRT....Pages 129-142 Comets and Asteroids from UKIRT....Pages 143-150 Spectroscopic Tomography of a Wind-Collision Region....Pages 151-157 Highlights of Infrared Spectroscopy of the Interstellar Medium at UKIRT....Pages 159-172 UKIRT and the Brown Dwarfs: From Speculation to Classification....Pages 173-183 White Dwarfs in UKIDSS....Pages 185-192 Discovery of Variables in WFCAM and VISTA Data....Pages 193-199 Near Infrared Extinction at the Galactic Centre....Pages 201-206 Observations of PAHs and Nanodiamonds with UKIRT....Pages 207-212 Nearby Galaxies with UKIRT: Uncovering Star Formation, Structure and Stellar Masses....Pages 213-227 Front Matter....Pages 127-127 WFCAM Surveys of Local Group Galaxies....Pages 229-234 HiZELS: The High Redshift Emission Line Survey with UKIRT....Pages 235-250 The HiZELS/UKIRT Large Survey for Bright Lyα Emitters at z ∼ 9....Pages 251-258 Observations of Gamma-Ray Bursts at UKIRT....Pages 259-268 Front Matter....Pages 269-269 The UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS): Origins and Highlights....Pages 271-278 A Billion Stars: The Near-IR View of the Galaxy with the UKIDSS Galactic Plane Survey....Pages 279-289 The UKIDSS Galactic Clusters Survey....Pages 291-298 The UKIDSS Deep eXtra-Galactic Survey....Pages 299-307 UKIDSS UDS Progress and Science Highlights....Pages 309-321 Exploring Massive Galaxy Evolution with the UKIDSS Ultra-Deep Survey....Pages 323-327 The UKIRT Planet Finder....Pages 329-341