The JCMT Nearby Galaxies Legacy Survey: SCUBA-2 observations of nearby galaxies

We present 850$\mu$m observations of a sample 8 nearby spiral galaxies, made using the SCUBA-2 camera on James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) as part JCMT Nearby Galaxies Legacy Survey (NGLS). corrected our data for presence $^{12}$CO $J=3\to 2$ line in bandwidth NGLS HARP data, finding typical contribution $\sim 20$%. measured dust column densities, temperatures and opacity indices by fitting spectral energy distributions constructed from archival Herschel observations, used GALEX Spitzer to make maps surface density star formation ($\Sigma_{\rm SFR}$). Typically, comparing SCUBA-2-derived H$_2$ densities H_2}$) $\Sigma_{\rm SFR}$ gives shallow law within with values typically being sublinear Herschel-derived broadly linear. This difference is likely due effects atmospheric filtering data. Comparing mean H_2}$ galaxies returns steeper index, consistent both Kennicutt-Schmidt value 1.4 linearity. Our results show that detection good predictor formation. suggest emission traces gas regions which will form stars timescales 5-100$ Myr, comparable timescale traced while preferentially densest these regions, forms shorter timescales.