Poster abstract

In this talk, I will highlight some of the early results from the initial 'shared risks' observing period of SCUBA2 on the JCMT. In particular I will show data from the JCMT Gould Belt Survey of nearby star-forming regions, and detail how these data will be used to improve our understanding of the star-formation process. The questions that we seek to answer with these data include the relationship between the mass function of pre-stellar cores at the lowest masses, and the relative lifetimes of the different evolutionary stages of star formation. I will also use some far-infrared data from the Akari satellite to demonstrate why SCUBA2 data is essential to complement the data from the Herschel satellite, and why the long wavelength provided by SCUBA2, together with shorter wavelength data from Herschel will break the degeneracy between temperature and column density.