2in the Perseus molecular cloud. We determined the dust emissivity index using four different techniques to combine the Herschel PACS+SPIRE data at 160 − 500 µm with the SCUBA-2 data at 450 µm and 850 µm. Of our four techniques, we found the most robust method was to filter-out the large-scale emission in the Herschel bands to match the spatial scales recovered by the SCUBA-2 reduction pipeline. Using this method, we find β ≈ 2 towards the filament region and moderately dense material and lower β values (β 1.6) towards the dense protostellar cores, possibly due to dust grain growth. We find that β and temperature are more robust with the inclusion of the SCUBA-2 data, improving estimates from Herschel data alone by factors of ∼ 2 for β and by ∼ 40% for temperature. Furthermore, we find core mass differences of 30% compared to Herschel-only estimates with an adopted β = 2, highlighting the necessity of long wavelength submillimeter data for deriving accurate masses of prestellar and protostellar cores.1. We applied the colour correction factors in Table 1 to the Herschel bands.

Observations of the dust emission using millimetre/submillimetre bolometer arrays can be contaminated by molecular line flux, such as flux from 12CO. As the brightest molecular line in the submillimetre, it is important to quantify the contribution of CO flux to the dust continuum bands. Conversion factors were used to convert molecular line integrated intensities to flux detected by bolometer arrays in mJy beam−1. These factors were calculated for 12CO line integrated intensities to the SCUBA‐2 850 and 450 μm bands. The conversion factors were then applied to HARP 12CO 3–2 maps of NGC 1333 in the Perseus complex and NGC 2071 and NGC 2024 in the Orion B molecular cloud complex to quantify the respective 12CO flux contribution to the 850 μm dust continuum emission. Sources with high molecular line contamination were analysed in further detail for molecular outflows and heating by nearby stars to determine the cause of the 12CO contribution. The majority of sources had a 12CO 3–2 flux contribution under 20 per cent. However, in regions of molecular outflows, the 12CO can dominate the source dust continuum (up to 79 per cent contamination) with 12CO fluxes reaching ∼68 mJy beam−1.

We present observations of NGC 1333 from SCUBA-2 on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT), observed as a JCMT Gould Belt Survey pilot project during the shared risk campaign when the first of four arrays was installed at each of 450 and 850 μm. Temperature maps are derived from 450 and 850 μm ratios under the assumption of constant dust opacity spectral index β = 1.8. Temperatures indicate that the dust in the northern (IRAS 6/8) region of NGC 1333 is hot, 20–40 K, due to heating by the B star SVS3, other young stars in the IR/optically visible cluster and embedded protostars. Other luminous protostars are also identified by temperature rises at the 17 arcsec resolution of the ratio maps (0.02 pc assuming a distance of 250 pc for Perseus). The extensive heating raises the possibility that the radiative feedback may lead to increased masses for the next generation of stars.

We report the discovery of seven new, very bright gravitational lens systems from our ongoing gravitational lens search, the Sloan Bright Arcs Survey (SBAS). Two of the systems are confirmed to have high source redshifts z = 2.19 and z = 2.94. Three other systems lie at intermediate redshift with z = 1.33, 1.82, 1.93 and two systems are at low redshift z = 0.66, 0.86. The lensed source galaxies in all of these systems are bright, with i-band magnitudes ranging from 19.73−22.06. We present the spectrum of each of the source galaxies in these systems along with estimates of the Einstein radius for each system. The foreground lens in most systems is identified by a red sequence based cluster finder as a galaxy group; one system is identified as a moderately rich cluster. In total the SBAS has now discovered 19 strong lens systems in the SDSS imaging data, 8 of which are among the highest surface brightness z ≃ 2 − 3 galaxies known.

We report on the serendipitous discovery in the Blanco Cosmology Survey (BCS) imaging data of a z = 0.9057 galaxy that is being strongly lensed by a massive galaxy cluster at a redshift of z = 0.3838. The lens (BCS J2352−5452) was discovered while examining i-and z-band images being acquired in 2006 October during a BCS observing run. Follow-up spectroscopic observations with the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph instrument on the Gemini-South 8 m telescope confirmed the lensing nature of this system. Using weak-plus-strong lensing, velocity dispersion, cluster richness N 200 , and fitting to a Navarro-Frenk-White (NFW) cluster mass density profile, we have made three independent estimates of the mass We have compared our measurements of M 200 and c 200 with predictions for (1) clusters from ΛCDM simulations, (2) lensing-selected clusters from simulations, and (3) a real sample of cluster lenses. We find that we are most compatible with the predictions for ΛCDM simulations for lensing clusters, and we see no evidence based on this one system for an increased concentration compared to ΛCDM. Finally, using the flux measured from the [O ii]3727 line we have determined the star formation rate of the source galaxy and find it to be rather modest given the assumed lens magnification.