Telescopes and Observatories

The James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT)

The JCMT 15-m radio telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii is a partnership between the UK, Canada and the Netherlands. Since its opening in 1987, it has probed the interstellar medium, star forming regions, and the earliest phases of galaxy evolution.

The JCMT collects very high frequency radio waves with its 15-m diametre antenna. With it, astronomers study the Sun, comets, planets, molecular clouds, galaxies, and the cosmic background radiation. JCMT astronomers detected complex molecules in Comet Hale-Bopp (1997) that had never before been seen in a comet.