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JCMT Spectral Legacy Survey (SLS)

This is the web home of the JCMT Spectral Legacy Survey (SLS). This is one of the surveys making up the JCMT Legacy Survey Program.

Stars form in the densest, coldest, most quiescent regions of molecular clouds. Molecules provide the only probes which can reveal the dynamics, physics, chemistry and evolution of these regions, but our understanding of the molecular inventory of sources and how this is related to their physical state and evolution is rudimentary and incomplete. The Spectral Legacy Survey (SLS) proposes to use the unique spectral imaging capabilities of HARP-B/ACSIS to study the molecular inventory and the physical structure of a sample of objects spanning different evolutionary stages and different physical environments in molecular clouds and to probe their evolution during the star formation process. The SLS will for the first time produce a spectral imaging survey of the content and distribution of all the molecules detected in atmospheric window from 320 GHz to 375 GHz towards a sample of sources.

Talk about the current status of the SLS. Given at High Temperature Astrochemistry, Galway 7-8 January 2008. A meeting of the Astrophysical Chemistry Group of the RSC and RAS. (pdf file, Jan 2008)

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Nov 2006: HARP-B test image of the Orion Bar in HCO+ J=4-3. (Courtesy of Jane Buckle, John Richer and Bill Dent.)

Here's the poster we presented at the ALMA Conference in Madrid in November 2006. (Click on the image to retrieve the full size pdf.)